ALLIGATORS AND CROCODILES. 635 



CHAPTER XL 



ALLIGATORS— CROCODILES— TORTOISES AND TURTLES. 



Alligators and Crocodiles: Their Habits — Cayraen, Gavials and Crocodiles — Mode of Seizing 

 their Prey — Size of Alligators — Alligators on the Amazon — Alligator and Crane — Man- 

 Eating Alligators — Their Contests — Tenacity of Life — Laying their Eggs — Tenderness for 

 their Young — Their Enemies — Torpidity in the Dry Season — "Playing 'Possum." — Tor- 

 toises and Turtles: The Galapago Islands — The Elephantine Tortoise — Rate of Traveling — 

 Marsh Tortoises — Manufacture of Tortoise Oil — Turtles on the Amazon — Sea-Turtles — 

 Their Enemies — Modes of Capturing Turtles — The Green Turtle — The Ilawksbill Turtle 

 — Barbarous Modes of Removing the Shell, and Selling the Meat — The Coriaceous Turtle. 



THERE was a time, long before man appeared upon the scene, •when huge croco- 

 diles swarmed in the rivers of the temperate zone. But the day when the 

 ferocious, bone-harnessed Saurians lorded it in these streams has passed, never to 

 return ; the diminished warmth of what are now the temperate regions of the globe 

 having long since confined them to the large rivers and lagunes of the torrid zone. 

 The scourge and terror of all that lives in the waters which they frequent, they may 

 with full justice be called the very images of depravity, as perhaps no animals in 

 existence bear in their countenance more decided marks of cruelty and malice. The 

 depressed head, so significant of a low cerebral development; the vast maw, garnished 

 with formidable rows of conical teeth, entirely made for snatch and swallow; the 

 elongated mud-colored body, with its long lizard-like tail, resting on short legs, stamp 

 them with a peculiar frightfulness, and proclaim the baseness of their instincts. The 

 short-snouted, broad-headed Alligators, or Caymen, belong to the New World; the 

 Gavials, distinguished by their straight, long, and narrow jaw, are exclusively Indian; 

 while the oblong-headed Crocodiles are not only found in Africa and Asia, but like- 

 wise infest the swamps and rivers of America. All these animals, however, though 

 different, in form and name, have everywhere similar habits and manners ; so that, in 

 general, what is remarked of the one may be applied to the others. 



Awkward and slow in their movements on the land, they are very active in the 

 water, darting along with great rapidity by means of their strong muscular tail and 

 their webbed hind feet. They sometimes bask in the sunbeams on the banks of the 

 rivers, but oftener float on the surface, where, concealing their head and feet, they 

 appear like the rough trunk of a tree, both in shape and color, and thus are enabled 

 the more easily to deceive and catch their prey. In America, many a slow-jjaced 

 Capybara, or Water pig, coming in the dusk of evening to slake its thirst in the 

 lagune, has been suddenly seized by this insidious foe ; and the Gangctic Gavial is 

 said to make even the tiger his prey. When the latter quits the thick cover of the 

 jungle to drink at the stream, the Gavial, concealed under water, steals along the 



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