154 GEOUPS or CROCODILES. 



they excite is not owing solely to the interest which the 

 naturalist takes in the objects of his study, it is connected 

 with a feeling common to all men who have been brought 

 up in the habits of civilization. You find yourself in a new 

 world, in the midst of untamed and savage nature. Now 

 the jaguar, the beautiful panther of America, appears 

 upon the shore; and now the hocco,* with its black 

 plumage and tufted head, moves slowly along the sausos. 

 Animals of the most different classes succeed each other. 

 " Esse como en el Paradiso" "It is just as it was in 

 Paradise," said our pilot, an old Indian of the Missions. 

 Everything, indeed, in these regions recalls to mind the 

 state of the primitive world with its innocence and felicity. 

 But in carefully observing the manners of animals among 

 themselves, we see that they mutually avoid and fear each 

 other. The golden age has ceased ; and in this Paradise of 

 the American forests, as well as everywhere else, sad and 

 long experience has taught all beings that benignity is 

 seldom found in alliance with strength. 



When the shore is of considerable breadth, the hedge of 

 sauso remains at a distance from the river. In the inter- 

 mediate space we see crocodiles, sometimes to the number 

 of eight or ten, stretched on the sand. Motionless, with 

 their jaws wide open, they repose by each other, without 

 displaying any of those marks of affection observed in other 

 animals living in society. The troop separates as soon as 

 they quit the shore. It is, however, probably composed of 

 tne male only, and many females; for as M. Descourtils, 

 who has so much studied the crocodiles of St. Domingo, 

 observed to me, the males are rare, because they kill one 

 another in fighting during the season of their loves. These 

 monstrous creatures are so numerous, that throughout the 

 whole course of the river we had almost at every instant five 

 or six in view. Yet at this period the swelling of the Bio 

 Apure was scarcely perceived ; and consequently hundreds 

 of crocodiles were still buried in the mud of the savannahs. 

 About four in the afternoon we stopped to measure a dead 

 crocodile which had been cast ashore. It was only sixteen 

 feet eight inches long ; some days after M. Bonpland found 

 another, a male, twenty-two feet three inches long. In 



* Ceyx alector, the peacock-pheasant ; C. pauxi, the cashew-bird. 



