130 A FLYING TRIP TO THE TROPICS. 



here. I shot and killed it, and then directed the little Indian with 

 us to bring it. He started for it ; but before he could reach it a 

 small alligator darted out of the pool, grabbed the bird, and 

 returned to the water with it. I ran up at this, and frightened the 

 caymancito " so that he dropped the jagana, but rose to the 

 surface, and, with his eyes just on a level with the water, watched 

 me closely. Cabell now came up with the rifle, and I took good 

 aim at a distance of some ten feet, and blazed away. The alligator 

 turned over on his back, and sunk in about eighteen inches of 

 water. I waded in, and secured both it and the bird. The alliga- 

 tor was ^tone dead ; yet, though I examined it closely a dozen times, 

 I could never detect the slightest scratch upon it. It was probably 

 killed by the concussion, as blood oozed from its throat. 



The jagana had a yellowish orange beak, a scarlet frontal shield 

 and lobes at the side of its mouth. It had a yellow, thorn-like spur 

 on the inner side of each wdng at the wrist-joint. Its general color 

 above and below was black, with greenish and purplish reflections ; 

 its primaries and secondaries pale, greenish white, with narrow, 

 blackish edgings ; its legs and feet olive {Jagana nigra). When I 

 came to skin this bird, I found that, although it much resembles a 

 coot, it is very easily skinned, whilst it is almost an impossibility to 

 get the skin of a coot's neck to pass over the head. Later in the 

 day I saw others that were whitish below. They were probably 

 young. The one that I killed was a female. At this place I saw a 

 slender clay-colored snake ; but it ran under some driftwood before 

 I could kill it. A little farther up the river I shot at a purple gal- 

 linule, and crippled it, but did not get it. Cabell got a snap shot 

 at a small alligator, but missed, and later he shot one of the terns 

 that we had seen so often. It was a large bird, a male in poor 

 plumage, grayish above ; tail short and forked, dark grayish ; wings 

 white, primaries black, below white, crown black, beak yellow, 

 feet the color of yellowish green oil paint {Phaethusa magniros- 

 tris). Farther up the river, where an opening offered, we went 

 ashore. Here we found among the underbrush a number of small 



