Sept. 15, 1894.] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
223 
saurians more certainly than the yelping of a dog, so I 
tried to squeal. It did not work. The notes were per- 
haps too high for my voice. But the alligator had drifted 
down until he was abreast of and not forty feet from me. 
I jerked my rifle up and plumped him squarely between 
the eyes. 
I have often heard that the hide of an alligator will 
turn a bullet. I believed it whenever I fired at and failed 
to hit my game; and I shot at hundreds of them when 
Uncle Sam furnished the ammunition during the weary 
weaks when we were patrolling the ruddy Red River and 
the coffee-tinted Tensas. Many a time, though, I had 
proof that when a .45 ball, urged by a goodly charge of 
powder, struck an alligator, a hole in bis hide was mighty 
suddenly made. 
So it was with this moss-back veteran of the Rio 
Platano. The ball from my Marlin neatly dug a furrow 
through his skull, and scooped out what few brains the 
reptile had. He lay as still as any wooden stick. There 
seemed to be not a twitch of a muscle. The fact is that 
the surprise fairly paralyzed him. 
I pushed off in my crazy punt, and managed to get the 
carcass ashore. I dragged it partly out of the water, then 
sat down to contemplate the prize. There was reason for 
believing that it was dead. But I had seen dead alligators 
before, so I reached over the corpse of this one and with 
the point of my machete tickled his ribs, on the side 
furthest from me. That massive tail swung around with 
prodigious power and promptness, and dashed a shower 
of sand and water into my face. I retired. 
A yell from the other bank called my attention to a 
Waikna standing there. 
"Come over and see the lagarto grande I killed," I 
Bhouted. He quickly found a canoe and paddled across. 
He was joyful over the death of the alligator. 
"He debbil, big debbil," said he earnestly. "He ketch 
young cow of me by nose. He pull her nose down. She 
go to bottom, den he eat um up; ketch girl, too." 
A few minutes later we were in the watla of the biggest 
authority and biggest rascal of the hamlet of Plantain. 
There were in the village half a dozen cocoa palms that 
tossed their long arms in the trade wind. Before them 
the sand sloped down to the curving beach, on which lay 
a dory hauled beyond reach of the waves. Behind the 
palms were four huts having walls of trunks of the papta 
palmetto, and the usual thatch of leaves. . Back of these, 
their crooked branches touching the eaves of the huts, 
were mangrove trees that held the sands from shifting and 
helped them to encroach upon the wide river behind the 
settlement. 
While breakfast was being cooked the death of the big 
alligator was discussed by every man, woman and child 
in the place. The host asked leave and proudly exhibited 
my Marlin, from which I had thrown every cartridge. 
While they peered curiously at the mysterious and most 
marvelous mechanism, that could load the deadly gun 
quicker than a man could pull the plug from his bottle of 
powder, they told yarns about the savage prowess of the 
cayman the bullet from that little gun had killed. They 
brought forward a trim girl of some dozen years, and 
showed the rows of scars on hips and thighs, where the 
pointed teeth of that saurian had pricked holes into which 
when made one might have thrust the first joint of his 
little finger. 
She was squatting in the shallow water at the riverside, 
splashing the water and paying little attention to her sur- 
roundings, which was careless; but she doesn't play that 
way now. She found herself gathered, without due and 
timely notice, into the jaws of that alligator. 
The girl was so surprised that she cried aloud. In fact, 
she screamed. Girls act that way. Her father and 
- brother were near, and hacked away with their ever-ready 
machetes at the head of the cayman. He gave up the 
dainty meal he had honestly captured, and showed his 
resentment of unfair treatment by sulking at the bottom 
of the river. And that girl was afraid, even when I saw 
her a year later, to go into deep water where alligators 
were known to lurk. 
The village was a unit in urging me to stay and kill all 
the big alligators in the river. The rifle that had knocked 
the brains out of so big a brute could surely put an end to 
any cayman. There were so many such reptiles in river 
and lagoon that pigs and puppies were almost sure to dis- 
appear before they became big enough to be of use, and 
it was difficult to raise babies. It was discouraging to the 
industries of housewives. Anyone who would clear the 
river of reptiles would be doing a good work for the ad • 
vancement of humanity — and pigs. 
No right-minded man objects to doing missionary work, 
when it is mixed with sport. So I told them to prepare an 
armful of pitch pine splinters and knots, and to fasten on 
the sloping bow of their biggest pipanti a rude frame of 
four poles, to hold a bed of sand on which to make our 
light. The sloping part was about 18in. wide and nearly 
4ft. long. Behind this we left a place for a man who was 
to feed the fire. Then came a screen of split bamboo. 
Before sunset we paddled up the river, that we might 
float down with the current. It would have been better 
if we had gone up earlier in the day, draped the canoe in 
bushes and floated down about sunset; for so we could 
have got a shot at the score or more of caymans which we 
saw as we went up. They were too shy to allow us to 
come close enough for a fairly good shot at the flat face 
that showed so little above the surface of the water. 
We got our pay, though, coming down. There was 
.little difficulty about floating to within twenty feet or so 
of the glaring eyeballs, dazzled by the blaze of light on 
our bow, and it was as easy to drive a pointed ball down 
between those eyes. We got half a dozen clean and easy 
shots while drifting down; but they only sharpened our 
zest. We turned aud silently paddled up the river again, 
and got five more alligators before one of the men whis- 
pered: 
"Sula, boss; sulatara!" 
Sure enough. A big deer he was— for Cental America. 
The light fell broadly on him as he stood knee deep 
among the water-poppies. He never knew what hit him, 
but he jumped at least a dozen feet, and fell without 
another kick. 
The men yelled their delight, then dragged the buck 
into the canoe; and again we floated toward the sea. But 
the men felt that we had done well enough. Eleven alli- 
gators in one evening made a goodly record. A fat buck 
for to-morrow's feasting was vastly better. It would have 
been unreasonable to keep silent under such a load of 
reason for rejoicing. So they shouted now and then, and 
threw the water up to fall in spray, and slapped the broad 
blades of their paddles on the surface of the Avater, with 
resounding whacks. It would have been a fool of a cay- 
man that would stay within rifle shot of so much racket. 
Half a dozen men were willing to carry my gun to La 
Cariba for me the next day, but one was enough. It was 
only four miles from Plantain River to the spot were we 
turned from the level, smooth beach and climbed over the 
low dune. All the dunes are low on the coast. The con- 
stant trade winds have not enough power to drive the 
sands into high banks, and the northers come too seldom 
to much move sands from the roots of the mangrove 
trees, the coco plum shrubs and the coarse and hardy 
sedges and grasses that hold the loose particles. 
Behind the dunes was the usual open prairie with here 
and there a group of long-leafed pines or clusters of pal- 
mettos. A little further on was a grove of short, thick- 
bodied cocoanut palms bearing hundreds of nuts that one 
standing on the ground could reach. 
Two houses stood beyond this grove of palms, amid a 
thicket of mango and marafion, orange, lemon and cacao 
trees. Grapevines rioted among lime trees, and the air 
was sweet with the odor of pineapples. Oranges and 
bananas, maranones and soursops. tamarinds and cocoa- 
nuts lay on benches, tables and the floor. In a corner 
was an iguana, the fore and the hind foot of one side tied 
together to keep the reptile from running away before it 
should be wanted for the dinner pot. All young ladies 
who expect to go to housekeeping should keep fh mind 
this simple expedient for preventing the escape of lizards. 
All that the place had of interest was quickly seen 
and heard, although it was a spot of ideal beauty, a 
paradise to one who had no ambition for anything other 
than a life completely free from toil, discord and anx- 
ious care. But a single day sufficed to see and hear all 
that could interest one there. A dory sailed, the next 
morning, out from the little landing and slipped over the 
placid waters of Ebon Lagoon toward a little cay where 
grow olive trees that were planted, perhaps a hundred 
years ago, to become living monuments of a forgotten 
colony. 
The lake extended full two miles beyond the cay, to a 
thickly wooded shore. Behind the belt of thickets lay 
savanas beloved by deer and quail and pheasants, and 
forests where wild pigs root in every glade, and tapirs 
lazily soak in every stream; where the jaguar and the 
black tiger, the ocelot with its pretty, spotted skin-, the 
brown gato de montana, and the puma prowl after troops 
of monkeys of various kinds, after agoutis and armadillos, 
sloths, ant bears and other prey. Turkeys, pheasants, 
quail and parrots, ducks, plover and other birds abound 
there. 
Near sunset onr dory rounded a high point and turned 
to the south. Half a mile of paddling against the yellow 
current brought us to a few houses near groves of oranges 
and cocoa palms. Beside the largpst of these groves stood 
a house of unusually large size. The lower story was of 
stone and bricks which had been brought from Fort Well- 
ington, nearly two miles distant, and built into walls 
nearly or quite two feet thick. Upon these stood a roomy, 
well lighted and clean structure of wood. Wide verandas 
were on every side, but all the hammocks were swung, 
and the bent wood chairs rocked in the cool breezes on 
the north and the east sides of the house. We looked 
from that veranda down upon the orange trees and the 
limes, on the palms between which the yellow river 
showed, and over them to the low island whereon Fort 
Wellington stood forty years ago and gave false promise 
of protection to the people of the Province of Victoria. 
Here was then the headquarters of a prosperous colony. 
Rich sugar estates were on the fertile plains that bordered 
el Rio Negro— the Black River. Coffee estates were on 
cool hills near by. Ships came here for sound and big 
pines to make masts and yards and planking for their 
hulls. Of all these prosperous settlements and of that 
fort nothing now is except this big house of Deacon's; a 
few rusty cauldrons, rollers and wheels lost in the forest 
where mills once stood, and a few coffee trees, and here 
and there a cane beneatih quick-growing trees of other 
kinds. 
Ah, well, there ended a dream that might have ended 
in a glorious and most happy reality. And a country 
that might well have become the prosperous home of 
thousands is now the most prolific hunting ground of a 
hundred or so shy, peaceful Indians and the home of a 
few Caribs who live largely on the sea. 
One still morning the few belongings left after the last 
gifts had been bestowed, were put aboard a schooner that 
was hewn from the trunk of a Spanish cedar tree. She 
was a little thing— only 8ft. beam and 40ft. in length, but 
she tossed her head daintily, took a dip or two into the 
shining water on the Black River bar, which the im- 
mortal Columbus crossed on the 17th of August, three 
hundred and ninety-two years ago. She shook the water 
from her back and was away over the Caribbean, bound 
for Trujillo, the spot where the grpat discoverer first set 
up the standard of Spain on the Western Continent. 
We were sailing over notable courses. Ours was the 
very path over which Puizon and Solis sailed westward 
with their pilot, Amerigo Vespucci, in 1497. We were 
skimming easily and swiftly over waters where Columbus 
pounded into head seas for weary weeks before his crazy 
punts rounded Cape Gracias a Dios, and his piouB crew 
cried "Thanks to God," as they squared their yards and 
ran away southward toward the highway they sought, 
for India. It was on these sparkling waters that the 
genial English gentleman, Wallace— whose name, slightly 
changed by Indian tongues, is perpetuated in that of the 
settlement founded by him and known now as Belize- 
plied on these Waters and along this coast the trade of 
toll gatherer, and scuttled ships and burned towns, hanged 
men and cut the throats of children, drowned mothers 
and ravished maids, for his own delectation and the 
profit and glory of Old England. For such was the 
merry custom of those good old times. 
We sailed along with sheets eased off, over the long 
ground swell that began to whiten under the rippling 
trade wind. We passed the wretched hamlet of Iriona 
where is, according to the prospectus of a land company, 
"the best harbor on this coast, east of Trujillo," and "a 
navigable river flowing across our lands," which river 
might be navigable for the white-winged ships of fancy, 
but is certainly not for more material craft bigger than a 
small canoe. The harbor might be better and more 
accessible than it is, if a sandbar two feet higher than the 
level of the sea did not extend entirely across the entrance. 
But the open roadstead of Iriona was a beautiful place 
when we sailed across it. A score of canoes were sailing 
here and there on its sunny surface. In some grave men 
were fishing for barracuda, for kingfish, for red snapper 
and for the kingly tarpon. In more, boys and girls of ten 
years or more skimmed to and fro for fun. It was fun 
We threw the head of our schooner into the wind npar 
a canoe, in which sat a weazened Carib and a girl. My 
Carib captain wished to buy part of a tarpon which the 
old man had; and a quarrel ensued about the price. The 
two men scolded, argued and menaced each other with 
fists, paddles and sticks. Half a dozen times they seemed 
on the point of murdering each other — but the girl sat 
unconcerned, dabbling her fingers in the sea beside the 
canoe. The captain turned to appeal to me. "That ras- 
kil ax two shillin' for little piece that fish!" he cried. 
"Big fish! Bully fish!" exclaimed the old man. He 
didn't hold it up for inspection. He couldn't well do so, 
for it was fully 4ft. long. 
"Fish no good; but I give shillin', one shillin' for half 
of 'im," and the captain showed where he would have it 
cut in two. 
At last the price was agreed on, the fish was cut in the 
middle and we sailed away, the two men shouting good- 
natured badinage to each other as we drew apart- 
The sun was behind the black mountains in the south, 
and the moon was red close down to the sea in the east, 
when we rounded a low, sandy spit that pointed to the 
west. We sailed along under the lee of the point half a 
mile, and let our anchor go. The little dory on deck went 
over the side and we went ashore. I strayed toward the 
extreme point of the spit, where scraggy bushes, and 
brown grasses, and wiry sedges swayed and bent before 
the fresh northeast winds as they bowed four centuries 
ago when Columbus landed on this very point, just as we 
bad done that afternoon. It was here that he erected the 
ensign of old Spain ; for I stood on Punto de Caxinas, the 
spot were the great discoverer first put his foot on the 
continent of America. 
I stayed there long enough for my crew to transact 
whatever business they may have had, with whomsoever 
may have been waiting for them amid the thickets of 
palms and mangroves. One of the crew was killed by a 
bullet from a soldier s rifle there a few days later, They 
had made a landing, and the coast guard came near as 
the schooner was sailing away. The officer in command 
ordered her to heave to; but her captain wished to save the 
customs authorities the bother of overhauling his cargo 
just then, and a shot was fired to bring her to. The soldier 
must have been more afraid of his rifle than usual, for the 
bullet bit a man on the schooner. All Caribs and many 
white men along that coast felt profound indignation at 
this high-handed interference by the authorities with the 
time honored custom of the Caribs. For they run many 
a cargo of goods smuggled from Belize. I could tell of 
smuggling by one who was at the time honored by the 
title and office of Governor of Mosquitia, and so robbed 
the government that betrayed him. But he is now a high 
official, and the tale may well be told at another time. 
The lights of Trujillo twinkled over the waters of the 
bay, nine miles away; but as no landing might be made 
there after sunset, we lay quietly at anchor under the lee 
of the point. In the morning the faint breeze sent us 
across in time to breakfast comfortably in the Hotel 
Americano, in a town that was firmly established a cen- 
tury before New York was discovered, long before James- 
town had existence, and even before the most ancient of 
towns made by Europeans in the United States was 
founded. Trujillo is in miles as far from New York as 
Denver is; in progress, Trujillo is as far from New York 
as — I was about to say Chicago is; but that would be im- 
possible. E. W. P. 
ONE MORNING. 
'Twas dark when I left the yacht. The stara were 
awake, however, and seemed to watch me in an interested 
way, as though full alive to the occasion. 
Stealthily I paddled up the creek, slipping through the 
water quietly, as though spirits were urging my boat 
along. 
Shoos-h; the bow touched the bank. I disembarked, 
and slowly felt my way through the swamp, bending the 
alders without a rustle, and parting the tangled vines with 
careful hand. 
It seemed as though that short fifty yards of swamp 
had lengthened into an hundred, before the firm ground 
was reached. 
At last I was through, and in the heavy cover that 
fringed the foot of the ridge. On hands and knees the 
crest was gained. 
The words were asleep. Save for the fall of an occa- 
sional something that seemed to emphasize the quiet, there 
was absolute stillness. Suddenly, waugh-h, wauah-h, 
waugh-hh-oo, who-o-o-o I shouted an old screech owl in 
tones that made the forest ring. 
Ughl It was uncanny, that unearthly screech. So un- 
expected. 
Silence again, as profound as before. 
The moments pass. I begin to see more distinctly. Now 
I hear the flute of a cardinal as he tunes up far away in 
the distance. Something is moving down there in the 
swamp, for I hear the swish of the bushes as they spring 
back into place. It is not an awkward wanderer that is 
abroad, for the rustling that marks his passage is faint, so 
faint, in fact, that only an alert ear may detect it. 
The dawn at last. With eager eyes I search the top of 
the towering pine that harbors my game. As the daylight 
grows, it seems to me that every knob, every gnarl, is a 
turkey, and once I even raised my gun to shoulder, so 
sure was I that I had discovered him. 
At this early hour it is a habit with roosting turkeys to 
awake, stretch their long necks and look about in Bearch 
of anything in the shape of danger. It is a way they 
have, and they never omit to follow this custom. This is 
what that turkey did, and his sharp eye spied me in a jiffy 
as I stood peering up in his direction. 
One glance sufficed. With a woof-f , woof-f , of wings 
that told of a weight of at least 201bs., he was off and 
away; another moment and I heard his derisive gobble 
echoing 'way back among the pines. 
WlLMOT TOWNSEND. 
The FOREST AND Sl'BEAM is put to press each week on Tues- 
day. Correspondence intended for publication should reach 
us at the latest by Monday, and asmuch earlier as ^practicable. 
