Chap. IV. 
ALLIGATORS. 
267 
ditch in England is in summer with tadpoles. During 
a journey of five days which I once made in the Upper 
Amazons steamer, in November, alligators were seen 
along the coast almost every step of the way^ and the 
passengers amused themselves, from morning till night, 
by firing at them with rifle and ball. They were very 
numerous in the still bays, where the huddled crowds 
jostled together, to the great rattling of their coats of 
mail, as the steamer passed. 
The natives at once despise and fear the great cay- 
man. I once spent a month at Cai9ara, a small village 
of semi-civilised Indians, about twenty miles to the 
west of Ega. My entertainer, the only white in the 
place, and one of my best and most constant friends, 
Senhor Innocencio Alves Faria, one day proposed a 
half-day's fishing with net in the lake, — the expanded 
bed of the small river on which the village is situated. 
We set out in an open boat with six Indians and 
two of Innocencio's children. The water had sunk so 
low that the net had to be taken out into the middle by 
the Indians, whence at the first draught, two medium- 
sized alligators were brought to land. 'They were dis- 
engaged from the net and allowed, with the coolest 
unconcern, to return to the water, although the two 
children were playing in it, not many yards off. We 
continued fishing, Innocencio and I lending a helping 
hand, and each time drew a number of the reptiles 
of different ages and sizes, some of them Jacare-tingas ; 
the lake in fact, swarmed with alligators. After taking 
a very large quantity of fish (I took pains to count the 
different species, and found there were no less than 
