426 THE CAYMAN. 



their composition, think it no harm, after they have performed the 

 sacred duties of the day, to enjoy a fine Sunday evening, in gay attire, 

 on the Alameda or public walk, where there is generally a band of 

 music. I had resorted to the walk attached to Angustura, and was 

 in company with Governor Ynciarte, when he stopped on reaching a 

 certain place, and begged my attention to what he was going to relate. 

 " Don Carlos," said he to me, " mark the opening which leads to the 

 Oronoque. I was on this very spot, a great number of the inhabitants 

 being present, when there suddenly came out of the river an enor- 

 mous cayman. It seized a man close by me, and carried him off to 

 the water, where it sunk with him to appear no more. The attack 

 was so sudden, and the animal so tremendous, that none of us had 

 either time or courage to go to the unfortunate man's rescue." This 

 certainly could not have been one of Master Swainson's " slow-paced 

 and even timid animals," which " an active boy armed with a small 

 hatchet" might easily have despatched. In 1824, I read in one of 

 the newspapers at New York, a detailed account of the death of one 

 of our consul's sons. The youth would bathe in the river Madalena, 

 in opposition to all that the Spaniards could say against so rash an 

 act, on account of the numbers and ferocity of the caymans there. 

 He had not fairly entered the water, when he was seized by a cayman 

 and disappeared for ever. How these dismal exhibitions of cayman 

 ferocity throw utter discredit upon what has been supplied to Lardner's 

 "Cabinet Cyclopaedia," on Fishes, vol. ii., p. 1 1 1, by Swain son ! Had 

 he ever seen anything of the habits of the cayman, surely he would 

 have paused before he informed his readers in Lardner, " We often 

 met with them [caymans] in the same country as Mr Waterton [How 

 comes this? Swainson was never either in Spanish or in Dutch 

 Guiana, in which territories only I fell in with the cayman], but they 

 were so timid that had we been disposed to perform such ridiculous 

 feats as that traveller narrates, our compassion for the poor animals 

 would have prevented us." I have now given, as far as I am able, a true 

 history of the cayman, without any exaggeration, quite free from 

 Swainson's base accusation of my " constant propensity to dress truth 

 in the garb of fiction ; " and I stake what little honour and credit I 

 have hitherto gained with the public on the correctness of it. 



Should the reader believe me on my word, and then compare my 



