ALTGATORS AS TABLE LUXURIES. THE GUAN^A. 127 



Mr. McKiunen iu liis " Tour," when speaking of his visit to 

 Acklin's Island in 1802-3, says: ''Alligators were sometimes 

 brought in for the table, but it required considerable address to 

 destroy them. The negroes, however, never display so much 

 ingenuity or patience as in pursuit of prey. The flesh of an 

 alligator which I tasted was hard, white and very much resembled 

 the sturgeon's." We heard of no alligators at New Providence, 

 and, as the Bahama Islands are destitute of rivers, we think it 

 probable the alligators referred to had strayed away from their 

 accustomed haunts, and that this huge reptile contributed little 

 to the support of the ancient Luca3'ans, , 



Lizards of small size are very common in New Providence. 

 They are from six to twelve inches in length, and their ancestors 

 could not here have very materially contributed to the mainte- 

 nance of human life. But Mr. McKinnen, speaking of the con- 

 dition of the island and their inliabitants in his own time, states 

 that *'the guana \iguana\ of the lizard tribe is found in the 

 holes in the rocks in all the islands. In the cultivated parts the 

 guana soon disappears, as they are easily taken, and their flesh 

 is much esteemed by the negroes." 



Mr. Bryan Edwards, of the island of Jamaica, in his history 

 of the West Indies, published in Dublin in 1793, says, concern- 

 ing the island, that 



"The woods were peopled with two very extraordinary creat- 

 ures; both of which anciently were, and still are, not only used 

 for food, but accounted superior delicacies. These are the iguana 

 and the mountain crab." The former " is a species of lizard — 

 a class of animals about which naturalists are not agreed whether 

 to rank them with quadrupeds, or to degrade them to serpents. 

 * * * From the alligator, the most formidable of the family, 

 measuring sometimes twenty feet in length, the gradation is 

 regular in diminution of size to the small lizard of three inches; 



