PERILOUS ADVENTUEE. 405 



crack of their fowling-pieces to ascertain each other's 

 whereabout. When they had finished their day's 

 sport, the descending sun was already struggling 

 through the lengthening shadows on the river. The 

 friends assembled where they had parted in the 

 morning, but the Spanish priest had not yet come 

 in. No one had heard his gun from the time they 

 had separated. They sought him through the dark- 

 ening thickets, and along the stream, and found him 

 at last, fast seated in a tree, into which he had been 

 obliged to betake himself to escape an Alligator 

 that had pursued him by a succession of leaps. 

 It had run in pursuit of him, as he said, jumping 

 rapidly after him, with its back crooked, like a 

 frightened cat. He had sprung to the branches, and 

 gained their security out of the reach of the reptile, 

 who for a long time after he had got into the tree, 

 crouched in a thicket close by, where it quietly 

 watched and waited his descent from his retreat. I 

 was not aware, until after I had heard this relation, 

 that Humboldt had similarly described the attack of 

 the crocodile when pursuing its victim on land. 



'•'When Moreau de St. Mery, about 1790, col- 

 lected materials for his work on St. Domingo, he 

 noticed a Cayman that had been kept for ten years 

 on a plantation at Gonaives, not far from the Ester, 

 called Cocherel. When it was first taken, it was 

 only eighteen inches long ; but at the time he wrote 

 it had grown to the dimensions of seven feet. This 

 may serve to give one some idea of the progressive 

 growth of this reptile. He mentions that it was 

 kept in a sort of inclosure into which no other water 



