roTH] ANIMAL FOOD 207 
weight of the Indian on top, the cayman soon touches bottom, but not 
before the noose has been tightened around its jaws and three or four 
knots added for better security (G, 1, 223). The same author also 
reports the destruction of these creatures by poison. They are shot 
in pools with arrows made of poison bamboo (Cana brava) ...a 
poison so formidable for caymans that however slightly the arrow 
pierces either the side of the shoulders or the eyes, the creatures will 
in a short while float to the surface dead (G, 11, 220). 
Reliable accounts show that alligators can also be caught with 
contrivances similar to the spring trap used for birds, though, of 
course. on a much larger scale, both in Cayenne (Cr, 265, 516) and 
on the upper Rio Negro (KG, 1, 229). So also they may be caught 
with special hooks, single or multiple. Schomburgk describes one 
of the former in use among the Makusi on the Cotinga, where a 
hardwood stick, about.a foot long and pointed at both ends, was 
tied at its middle to a rope and then bound round and round with 
strips of flesh so as to make it look like part and parcel of the rope, 
the other end of the rope being tied to a tree. A similar contrivance 
seems to have been employed on the Orinoco, where the double- 
pointed stick was known as the tolete (G, 1, 220). Waterton was 
the first to make mention of the use of multiple hooks on the Esse- 
quibo—a method which T have noticed asstill existing among Carib on 
the upper Pomeroon. But let Waterton give the account in his own 
inimitable way : The day was now declining apace, and the Indian had 
made his instrument for taking the cayman. It was very simple. 
There were four tough pieces of hardwood, a foot long and about as 
thick as your little finger and barbed at both ends. They were tied 
around the end of the rope in such a manner that if you conceive the 
rope to be an arrow, these four sticks would form the arrow’s head, so 
that one end of the four united sticks answered to the point of the ar- 
rowhead while the other ends of the sticks expanded at equal distances 
round the rope (fig. 64). Now it is evident that if the cayman swal- 
lowed this—the other end of the rope, which was 30 yards long, being 
fastened to a tree—the more he pulled the faster the barbs would stick 
into his stomach. This wooden hook, if you may so call it, was well 
baited with the flesh of the acouri, and the entrails were twisted 
round the rope for about a foot above it. Nearly a mile from where 
we had our hammocks the sand bank was steep and abrupt, and 
the river very still and deep. There the Indian pricked a stick into 
the sand. It was 2 feet long, and on its extremity was fixed the 
machine. It hung suspended about a foot from the water, and the 
end of the rope was made fast to a stake driven well into the sand. 
The Indian then took the empty shell of a land tortoise and gave 
