Caiman

“ In the Spanish parts it is called ‘caïman,’ and there are two species well-known, viz the spectacled caïman of Guiana, and the alligator of the Mississippi. No doubt, when the great rivers of South America have been properly explored, it will come to light, that there are other varieties than these. I have heard of a species that inhabits the Lake Valencia in Venezuela, and which differs from both the American species mentioned. It is smaller than either, and is much sought after by the Indians for its flesh, which these people eat, and of which they are particularly fond. ”

“ The manner in which our gallant diver accomplished his daring feat was thus explained by his companions; the caiman, like the domestic hog, is said to delight in being scratched about the ribs, [23] and of this the diver perhaps availed himself in order to place the noose around his neck, being very careful to approach him from behind, as it is a well-known fact that these reptiles, owing to the nature of their collar vertebræ, cannot easily turn round. The alligator is not so dangerous as its congener the crocodile of the Orinoco and its tributaries ”

“ The barbed blades had taken hold, and the caïman was secured!
“Finding himself thus caught, the huge reptile dived to the bottom, then rose again, bellowing loudly, and lashing the water into foam, the blood all the while running from his jaws and nostrils. At intervals, he would rush from point to point—until suddenly checked by the strong raw-hide lasso—making the tree shake with his great strength; and this he did for a long while. His struggles at length grew fainter, and more feeble, and he lay motionless in the water. ”

“ They hire people to sing and weep at their funerals; burn benzoin; bury their dead on the third day in strong coffins, and sometimes kill slaves to accompany their deceased masters. They held the caiman, or alligator, in great reverence, and when they saw him they called him nono, or grandfather, praying with great tenderness that he would do them no harm ”

“ The spine of a crocodile is broken by a blow with a large ax just behind the shoulders. It stays dead.
The caimans migrate overland from lagoon to lagoon during the dry season. When at last they find water they dig holes in the mud and sleep until the heavy rains return, when they emerge and resume their normal ways of life. Quite exciting stories are told of persons who happen to meet migrating bands of these “barbillos”, creatures about three feet long. Ordinarily they will not attack humans but they will not hesitate to do so if they feel they are threatened. ”

“ In Central and South America alligators are represented by five species of the genus Caiman, which differs from Alligator by the absence of a bony septum between the nostrils, and the ventral armour is composed of overlapping bony scutes, each of which is formed of two parts united by a suture. C. sclerops, the spectacled alligator, has the widest distribution, from southern Mexico to the northern half of Argentina, and grows to a bulky size. The largest, attaining an enormous bulk and a length of 20 ft., is the C. niger, the jacare-assu or large caiman of the Amazons. ”

“ We passed some large lagoons on the right bank of the river, and on the left bank saw the mouth of the river Securé, on the sandbar of which were congregated together a larger number of alligators, basking in the sun, than I saw on any other part of the Mamoré. It was no use shooting any of them, as we had plenty of beef in the canoes, and although the Indians are very glad to eat cayman flesh when amongst the rapids, they scorn the idea when in their own country of the Beni, where the term “cayman-eater” (“come caiman”) [168] is a common term of abuse in their villages. ”

“ The dorsal shield contains six rows of larger scutes. The fingers are not webbed. The general colour is greenish black above, speckled with yellow; greyish below. Total length only about six feet.
Caiman.–The five species of this genus, confined to Central America or to the East Andesian parts of South America, resemble the Alligators in most features, but differ from them in the following points. The nasals, although bordering the nasal groove, do not form a bony nasal septum. The supratemporal fossae are very small ”

“ Caimans were particularly plentiful on the upper Paraguay. Scores of the evil-looking reptiles lay on the sand-banks, with wide-open mouths and staring, glassy eyes. A fringe of trees flanked the water; through them we could see the boundless wastes of pantanales beyond. Troops of black howler monkeys ambled leisurely away as the boat drew near; the males only were black, the females being of a straw-color. There were immense flocks of a species of gray-throated, green parrakeets; some of them were building enormous nests of sticks in the branches. ”

“ Upon the trees, the macaws, and parrots, and toucans, and trogons. In the waters, the scarlet flamingoes, the ibises, and the tall herons; and in the air, the hawks, the zamuros, the king-vultures, and the eagles.
We shall see much of the reptile world, both by land and water. Basking upon the bank, or floating along the stream, we may behold the great water lizards—the crocodile and caïman; or the unwieldly forms of the cheloniæ—the turtles. Nimbly running along the tree-trunk, or up the slanting lliana, we may see the crested iguana, hideous to behold. ”

“ Our first stop, on account of a norther, was exciting; from the anxiety of the men, we expected to be instantly upset. We ran into the mouth of a little stream and lay to, and the men were almost instantly asleep. Our party went out exploring; our landing place was a heap of shells, whether artificial or natural I am not sure; the place was a favorite spot with hunters of caimans, or alligators, and we found numbers of almost complete skeletons and skulls lying on the banks. ”

“ While the fish-eating gavials swallow their prey whole, the crocodiles, caimans, and alligators prey upon all living animals that come within their reach, whether large or small, and they will often leave the water to seize their intended victims, such as pigs, sheep, birds, or even human beings. ”

“ Accordingly they went ashore at the Caimanes, carrying with them about nine thousand Pounds among thirty Persons; and it being fair Weather, the Mate and a Boy brought the Vessel into Port Royal, in Jamaica. ”

“ Believing that I have sufficiently described the Indians and their habits, I will now introduce to my readers two species of monsters that I have often bad occasion to observe, mid even to combat—the one a denizen of forests, the boa constrictor; [214] the other of lakes and rivers, the cayman or alligator. At the period at which I first occupied my habitation, and began to colonise the village of Jala-Jala, caymans abounded on that side of the lake. From my windows I daily saw them sporting in the water, and waylaying and snapping at the dogs that ventured too near the brink. ”

“ You had only to swing your canoe up near the shadowy edge of the pool and draw your cast once across the open water to know whether or not you would eat trout for breakfast. If the small fish chased your flies, then you might as well go home or study nature; you would certainly get no trout. But you could never tell when the change would come. With the smallest occasion sometimes—a coolness in the air, the run of a cat’s-paw breeze, a cloud shadow drifting over—a transformation would sweep over the speckled Ahabs lying deep under the lily pads. ”

“ In these waters the capybaras and small caymans paid no attention to one another, swimming and resting in close proximity. They both had the same enemy, the jaguar. The capybara is a game animal only in the sense that a hare or rabbit is. The flesh is good to eat, and its amphibious habits and queer nature and surroundings make it interesting. In some of the ponds the water had about gone, and the capybaras had become for the time being beasts of the marsh and the mud ”

“ Jaguars love the water. They drink greedily and swim freely. In this country they rambled through the night across the marshes and prowled along the edges of the ponds and bayous, catching the capybaras and the caymans; for these small pond caymans, the jacare-tinga, form part of their habitual food, and a big jaguar when hungry will attack and kill large caymans and crocodiles if he can get them a few yards from the water. On these marshes the jaguars also followed the peccary herds; it is said that they always strike the hindmost of a band of the fierce little wild pigs. ”

“ Even the despised pike or pickerel species (Esocidoe) and some of the catfishes will rise to a large and gaudy fly. In Florida I have taken catfish with the artificial fly until my arms ached and I was fain to cry quits. I have also taken many marine species with the fly, as red-fish, blue-fish, sea-trout, snappers, groupers, crevalle, bone-fish, snooks, etc., etc., and once, as a matter of experiment, a five-foot alligator. The ‘gator was taken with a “fly” tied on a shark-hook, the hackled body being a squirrel’s tail, with wings of a small seagull. ”

“ The cayote will go swinging gently off on that deceitful trot of his, and every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoulder that will fill that dog entirely full of encouragement and worldly ambition, and make him lay his head still lower to the ground, and stretch his neck further to the front, and pant more fiercely, and stick his tail out straighter behind, and move his furious legs with a yet wilder frenzy, and leave a broader and broader, and higher and denser cloud of desert sand smoking behind, and marking his long wake across the level plain! ”

“ Up would sail a big trout, open-jawed to engulf the morsel. At that instant the clutching paw of the watcher would strike down and around more swiftly than eye could follow—and the next instant the fish would be flopping violently among the underbrush up the bank, with leaves and twigs clinging to its fat, silvery, dappled sides. The sport was one which gave the big wildcat never-failing delight; and, moreover, there was no other food in all the wilderness quite so exquisite to his palate as a plump trout from the ice-cool waters of the Guimic. ”

“ The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry.
He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. ”

“ The deer are roused from rest;
The sea-birds breast the brine;
And from the steep wild torrents leap
Foaming 'neath rock and vine.
But she, in one tall tower,
High built above the tide,
In her heart a thorn, turns from the morn,
Wan-faced and weary-eyed.
Long, long she looks a-sea,
As one who seeks a sail:
But on her view the empty blue
Beats and her eyelids quail. ”

“ We sit on deck writing letters, reading, watching the sunny river-side pictures that glide by at a foot’s pace, and are so long in sight. Palm-groves, sand-banks, patches of fuzzy-headed dura [21] and fields of some yellow-flowering herb succeed each other. A boy plods along the bank, leading a camel. They go slowly, but they soon leave us behind. A native boat meets us, floating down sidewise with the current. A girl comes to the water’s edge with a great empty jar on her head and waits to fill it till the trackers have gone by. ”

“ This savage creature will instantly attack a man or a horse, and on this account the Indians of Chili, before wading a stream, take the precaution of using long poles, to ascertain its presence or to drive it away. Naturalists assert that the cayman is not found in the North American rivers, and I should imagine this to be correct, for, although engaged in many alligator hunts, I found from personal experience and minute inquiry that the species found in North America is harmless if unmolested. ”

“ Nothing escaped her;—swallows skimming and sheering Spring Pond, trout that jumped at sunset, the quick furry shapes of mink and muskrat, the rattling flash of a blue-winged kingfisher, a tall heron wading, a gull mewing.
Nothing escaped her; the casual caress of mating birds, procreation in farm-yard and barn-yard, fledgelings crying from a robin's nest of mud and messy refuse, blind kittens tugging at their blinking mother. ”

“ Caymans floated idly on the water, looking more like half-sunken logs, until the approach of the motor-driven boat aroused them from their lethargy. Enormous eels, some of them of the deadly electric variety, could be seen beneath the placid surface, giving promise of a horrible death to any human being who, by accident or design, had to take to swimming in those cool and tranquil waters. Through the foliage came the unmistakable signs of the presence of jaguars and panthers, while more than once Peter caught sight of an enormous anaconda gliding over the branches. ”

“ It was the big cat's favoured custom to spend hours at a time crouched over one or another of these pools, waiting for a chance to catch a trout. Where an overhanging rock or a jutting root came out into deep water, he would lie as motionless as the rock or log itself, his round face bent close down to the glassy surface, his bright eyes intently following the movements of the big, lazy trout in their safe deeps. Once in a long while, often enough [139] to keep his interest keen, a May-fly or a fat worm would drop close past his nose and lie kicking on top of the water. ”