LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 55 



of life. His delight in specimens free from flaws made him always 

 ready to run risks in catching animals of prey without disfiguring 

 their skins. His artistic zeal led him twice into a hazardous con- 

 flict with the coulcanara snake, or Bush-master. The negroes and 

 Indians were accustomed to decapitate the monster, and the speci- 

 mens in museums were completed by wooden heads, which were 

 furnished with exaggerated false teeth the size of a tiger's. Waterton 

 captured his snakes alive. The first was fourteen, the second ten 

 feet long. He seized this last by the throat, and walked home 

 grasping its neck with both hands, and with its folds tightly coiled 

 round his body, a victorious Laocoon. The details of these 

 combats, which may be read in the " Wanderings," illustrate a pre- 

 dominant trait in his character. "Prudence and resolution," he said, 

 " ought to be the traveller's constant companions ; " and his caution 

 was not inferior to his courage. His daring exploits were never the 

 ebullitions of thoughtless foolhardiness. He took an accurate 

 measure of the nature of the danger, and the energy with which he 

 faced and foiled it was the boldness of calculation. 



After staying some time at Mibiri, Waterton made an expedition 

 up the Essequibo to observe the big alligators, or caymans, and to 

 try and secure an unmutilated specimen. He travelled more than 

 300 miles, and when he reached their haunts he fished for them 

 with a shark-hook. The alligators contrived to swallow the bait 

 and leave the hook. An Indian was shown the shark-hook, shook 

 his head, and laughed at it. He constructed a hook of a different 

 pattern with pieces of wood, and it was soon firmly fixed in the jaws 

 of an alligator, more than ten feet long. The natives wanted to 

 shoot him before they hauled him on to the bank, or he would rush 

 at them, they said, and worry them. Waterton insisted that he 

 should be pulled out alive, or his hide would be perforated. 

 Wrapping the sail of his canoe round the end of the light mast, 

 Waterton went down on one knee, and intended, if he was attacked, 

 to thrust the spar down the throat of the open-mouthed cayman ; 

 but when the landing was effected, the quick eye of the naturalist 

 perceived that the savage was cowed, and with a readiness of 

 resource which never failed him, he flung down his mast, bestrode 

 his prize with a leap, twisted the fore-legs on to the back, and, 



