VOYAGE TO THE RIO NEGRO 177 
I was disappointed not to observe a single plant 
in the lake, save the rank grasses around the 
margin ; but alligators were floating on the water 
in almost countless numbers, resembling so many 
huge black stones or logs. What we had seen in 
the Amazon of these reptiles was as nothing com- 
pared to their abundance in the Ramos and its 
adjacent lakes. I can safely say that at no instant 
during the whole thirty days were we without one 
or more alligators in sight, when there was light 
enough to distinguish them ; and we might hear 
their snorting or grunting all the night through. 
Alligators sometimes take the bait intended for 
pirarucii, and the line is strong enough to hold 
them. One morning at early dawn our men espied 
a young alligator about 7 feet long fast asleep in a 
shallow bay close by where our boat was moored. 
He lay with his head in the mud, and only the end 
of his tail sticking out of the water. They got a 
stout pole and drove it at him with their united 
force ; whereon he whisked round too nimbly for 
his assailants to spring out of the way, spirted a 
shower of mud over them, and dived away. 
For a description of the pirarucii I must refer to 
the writings of the naturalists who preceded me. 
It is the monarch of the fishes of the Amazon, and 
one of the finest fresh-water fishes in the world. 
When full-grown it measures 6 to 8 feet long, 
weighs from 60 to 100 pounds, and yields about 
one-third that weight of dried fish. When fresh it 
is capital eating, although scarcely equal to salmon, 
with the exception of the lower part of the belly 
(called the ventrexa), which being cut from the 
newly-caught animal and roasted on a spit over a 
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