VOYAGE TO THE RIO NEGRO 171 
pointed her out to him. M. Gouzennes then fired 
twice on her with ball ; but although hit each time 
the only effect was to make her turn round on her 
nest and look very angry. This is the only 
instance that has fallen under my own observation 
of the alligator incubating, but I have often heard it 
spoken of as a fact.^ 
It took us ten days to reach Villa Nova from 
Obidos, although the distance is only 95 miles ; 
for there was seldom any wind beyond the squalls 
preceding thunderstorms, and those rarely blew in 
the right direction ; and it was very slow and very 
hard work for a couple of paddles to make head in 
our heavy craft against the current of the Amazon. 
The river was at its lowest, and had receded 
from the forest-margin, leaving in some places a 
bare sandy or muddy beach, so broad that I could 
barely walk to the farther side of it and back whilst 
our breakfast or dinner was being cooked ; and then 
I rarely found anything in flower besides Mimosa 
asperata, and two or three common river-side Ingas 
and Myrtles. All we could do, therefore, was to 
lie under the toldo and doze or read our books and 
old newspapers. 
The whole coast from Obidos to Villa Nova is 
flat and uninteresting, until a little below the latter 
town its tameness is somewhat relieved by a lowish 
wooded ridge, called Os Parentins, running close 
^ In ascending one of the rivers of Guayaquil in a boat with two men, we 
came to where a bit of earth-cliff had fallen in and had left exposed at the top a 
deposit of alligator's eggs. One of the men picked out a couple of eggs and 
dashed them on the water. They broke with the shock, and out of each darted a 
fully-hatched alligator and dived out of sight. I never saw a finer example of 
instinct, or inherited reason, being called into play at the very moment of a 
creature's coming into the world. 
