17S 
Tub ceocodile. 
real’- and the Cocos crispa of the northern coast. Porous 
limestone (of the J ura formation) appeared from time to 
time in the plain. 
Batabano was tlien a poor village, and its church had 
been completed only a few years previously. The Sienega 
begins at the distance of half a league from the village- it 
is a tract of marshy soil, extending from the Lagima’de 
Cortez as far as the mouth of the Bio Xagua, on a length 
of sixty leagues from west to east. At Batabano it is be- 
lieved that in those regions the sea continues to gain upon 
the land, and that the oceanic irruption was particularly 
remarkable at the period of the great upheaving which took 
place at the end of the eighteenth century, when the 
tobacco nulls disappeared, and the Eio Chorrerii changed its 
course. Nothing can be more gloomv than the a.siiect of 
these marshes around Batabano. Not a .-<hrub break? the 
monotony of the iirospect; a few stunted trunks of palra- 
trees rise like broken masts, amidst great tufts of Junceie 
and Irides. As we staid only one night at Batabano 1 
regretted much that I was unable to obtain precise iiiforma- 
tion relative to the two species of crocodiles which infest the 
oienega. Ihe inhabitants give to one of these animals the 
name of cayman, to the other that of crocodile; or, as they 
say comiiioiily in Spain, of cocodrilo. They assured us that 
the latter has most agility, and measures most in heio-ht: his 
.snout IS iiiore pointed than that of the cayman, .and thev 
are never found together. The crocodile is very coiirao-eous, 
.and IS said to climb into boats when he can find a support 
lor his tail, lie frequently wanders to the distance of a 
league from the Bio Canto and the marshy coast of Xaoiia. 
P'S® oil file islands. This animal is sometime.'^ 
mteen teet long, and will, it is said, pursue a man on horse- 
back like the wolve.siii Europe; while the animals exclusively 
called caymans at Batabano, are so timid, that people 
bathe without apprehension in places where they live in 
bands. These peculiarities, and the name of cocodrilo, 
given at the island of Cuba, to the most damrerous of the 
carnivorous reptiles, appear to me to indicate a different 
species from the great animals of the Orinoco, Bio Magd.a- 
lena, and Samt Domingo. In other parts of the Spanish 
