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I also had a hut built, and put an Indian to live in it, whose duty was to keep constant watch, and to let me know as soon as the cayman returned to the river. He watched in vain, for upwards of two months, but at the end of that time he came and told me that the monster had seized a horse, and had dragged it into the river to devour at leisure.
CAYMAN ISLAND: this island appears in the charts to be fringed; and Captain B. Allen informs me that the reefs extend about a mile from the shore, and have only from five to twelve feet water within them; coloured red.
One fine evening last year, as the people of Angustura were sauntering up and down here in the Alameda, I was within twenty yards of this place when I saw a large cayman rush out of the river, seize a man, and carry him down before anybody had it in his power to assist him. The screams of the poor fellow were terrible as the cayman was running off with him.
Arrived there, strong currents bore them towards the islands called the Queen's Garden, and then in the direction of east-south-east. The little flotilla contended for sixty days against the wind without making more than 210 miles, and at length was driven towards the coast of Cuba, which led to the discovery of Cayman and Pinos Islands.
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. After a laborious ride we arrived at Fort Andrews, where we found a military station of U.S. Infantry.
He plunged into the river with his prey; we instantly lost sight of him, and never saw or heard him more." I was a day and a half in dissecting our cayman, and then we got all ready to return to Demerara. It was much more perilous to descend than to ascend the falls in the Essequibo. The place we had to pass had proved fatal to four Indians about a month before.
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; the other of lakes and rivers, the cayman or alligator.
Thus the island of Grand Cayman, scarcely twenty feet above sea-level, is said to be a mountain-top twenty thousand five hundred and sixty feet above the bottom of the submarine valley beside which it rises, an altitude exceeding that of any mountain on the North American continent. A little more than five miles, or say twenty-seven thousand feet, is the greatest depth yet sounded at sea.
I soon after reached the shore in safety, where I was speedily joined by the escort, who saw nothing of the reptile in their way across, and who, being men bred amongst such scenes, and totally divested of fear, at once took the water, although they had witnessed the encounter. The cayman of South America is very ferocious, and is popularly styled the hyena of the alligator tribe.
She was her own mistress, and she could fold her hands and take her rest, eat and drink and sleep and be merry, all at Mr. Smithson's expense. The yachts came flocking in next day, like a flight of white-winged sea birds, and Mr. Smithson had enough to do receiving visitors upon the Cayman.
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