I70 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
Obidos seems unlucky for travellers. Here Spix 
and Martius had been delayed to repair their helm, 
thirty years before ; and we ourselves had scarcely 
embarked, early in the morning of the 15th, when 
our boat took the ground in a stony place, and the 
ironwork of the helm was broken by the shock. It 
took a smith the whole day to repair it, and it was 
not until 10 of the following morning that we got 
it fastened on and again set forth on our voyage. 
Above Obidos, we began to meet with vast 
numbers of alligators. When anchored on the 
night of the i6th in the still bay at the mouth of 
the Trombetas, we were surrounded by them, mostly 
floating nearly motionless on the water and only 
distinguishable from logs by the undulations of the 
back. Their grunt is something like what a pig 
might make with his mouth shut ; our people imi- 
tated it, and thus drew several of them quite near 
us, but I did not care to waste powder and shot on 
them. The following morning, coasting slowly 
along a low muddy shore, we saw a multitude of 
them — large and small — put off from land into deep 
water at our approach. 
The female alligator of the Amazon piles up her 
tough-coated eggs, the size of swan's eggs, to the 
number of from forty to sixty, and covers them with 
dead leaves and other rubbish, so that the pile or 
nest looks like a small haycock. One morning the 
people of M. Gouzennes's cuberta went on shore to 
collect firewood, and as they ran along in Indian 
file they passed close to an alligator sitting on her 
nest. She took no notice of them, but the hind- 
most man called out to M. Gouzennes on board 
the cuberta, which was lying close inshore, and 
