178 THE CBOCODILE. 



real * and the Cocoa crispa of the northern coast. Porous 

 limestone (of the Jura formation) appeared from time to 

 time in the plain. 



Batabano was then a poor village, and its church had 

 been completed only a few years previously. The Sienega 

 begins at the distance of half a league from the village; it 

 is a tract of marshy soil, extending from the Laguna de 

 Cortez as far as the mouth of the Rio Xagua, on a length 

 of sixty leagues from west to east. At Batabano it is be- 

 lieved that in those regions the sea continues to gain upon 

 the land, and that the oceanic irruption was particularly 

 remarkable at the period of the great upheaving which took 

 place at the end of the eighteenth century, when the 

 tobacco mills disappeared, and the Rio Chorrera changed its 

 course. Nothing can be more gloomy than the aspect of 

 these marshes around Batabano. Not a shrub breaks the 

 monotony of the prospect: a few stunted trunks of palm- 

 trees rise like broken masts, amidst great tufts of Junceae 

 and Irides. As we staid only one night at Batabano, I 

 regretted much that I was unable to obtain precise informa- 

 tion relative to the two species of crocodiles which infest the 

 Sienega. The inhabitants give to one of these animals the 

 name of cayman, to the other that of crocodile; or, as they 

 say commonly in Spain, of cocodrilo. They assured us that 

 the latter has most agility, and measures most in height: his 

 snout is more pointed than that of the cayman, and they 

 are never found together. The crocodile is very courageous, 

 and is said to climb into boats when he can find a support 

 for his tail. He frequently wanders to the distance of a 

 league from the Rio Cauto and the marshy coast of Xagua, 

 to devour the pigs on the islands. This animal is sometimes 

 fifteen feet long, and will, it is said, pursue a man on horse- 

 back, like the wolves in Europe; while the animals exclusively 

 called caymans at Batabano, are so timid, that people 

 bathe without apprehension in places where they live in 

 bands. These peculiarities, and the name of cocodrilo, 

 given at the island of Cuba, to the most dangerous of the 

 carnivorous reptiles, appear to me to indicate a different 

 species from the great animals of the Orinoco, Rio Magda- 

 lena, and Saint Domingo. In other parts of the Spanish 





