156 HISTORY OF THE ALLIGATOR. 



This species of alligator is most numerous in the fresh 

 waters immediately to the northward of the Gulf of Mexico, 

 and it is abundant in proportion as the locality is marshy, 

 full of putrifying things and pestilent. The vast tide of 

 the Mississippi shows, upon the grandest scale any where 

 to be met with, the power of running water over the earth. 

 Trees, forests, islands, are moved about by it, as lightly as 

 dry stubble by the autumnal floods of our rivers ; and 

 -therefore, excepting in the cold season when they remain 

 torpid in their hybernacula under the banks, it is always 

 harvest time with the alligators, and also with the soft tur- 

 tle, ( Testudo ferox,) which is as voracious in proportion to 

 the turtles of other places, as the pike-headed alligator to 

 the other alligators. Many of the accounts of these reptiles 

 as given by authors must be received with deductions ; 

 but after every allowance, they are bold and formidable 

 enemies. 



The species most frequently met with in the rivers of 

 Guiana, is different in appearance, and not so daring in its 

 manner. It has the head shorter and broader ; the teeth 

 smaller, and a bony protuberance over each eye; on 

 which account Cuvier terms it A. palpebrasus, the eye- 

 browed alligator. It rarely if ever attacks any animal on 

 land, though in the season of activity it is abundantly 

 active in the water. It was upon the back of one of this 

 species that Mr. Waterton performed that ride which he 

 describes with such graphic naivete, in his " Wanderings 

 in South America." The feat seems a desperate one ; 

 but, after all, what could even an alligator (or caiman as it 

 is there called) do, with the barbs of a hook, the size of an 

 ordinary fagot, lacerating its stomach, by the joint action 

 of a dozen men pulling it to the beach, and its own resist- 

 ance in endeavoring to keep the water? 



There are other species which inhabit the rivers further 

 to the southward, which have the muzzle more produced ; 

 and the accounts state that they are milder in their man- 



