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Updated: June 12, 2025
The German taxidermist who was with Colonel Rondon's party, Reinisch, a very good fellow from Vienna, sat on a stool, alternately drenched with rain and sweltering with heat, and muttered to himself: "Ach, Schweinerei!" Two small caymans, of the common species, with prominent eyes, were at the bank where we moored, and betrayed an astonishing and stupid tameness.
On my second visit to the Havannah, in 1804, I could not return to the Sienega of Batabano; and therefore I had the two species, called caymans and crocodiles by the inhabitants, brought to me, at a great expense.
On another occasion, late in the day, a flock passed by, gleaming white with black points in the long afternoon lights, and with them were spoonbills, showing rosy amid their snowy companions. Caymans, always called jacares, swarmed; and we killed scores of the noxious creatures. They were singularly indifferent to our approach and to the sound of the shots.
It extended through the Caribbean Sea, where the trade winds blow unceasingly from the eastward, in a direction south of some of the most beautiful and picturesque islands in the world, as Porto Rico, St. Domingo, and Cuba, and ranged along in sight of Jamaica and the Caymans, then rounded Cape Antonio, once the notorious haunt of pirates, and entered the Gulf of Mexico. Leaving the harbor of St.
As Benito said, they are formidable creatures, and it is fortunate that their attacks can be guarded against. Suddenly cries were heard in the bow. "Caymans! caymans!" Manoel and Benito came forward and looked. Three large saurians, from fifteen to twenty feet long, had managed to clamber on to the platform of the raft. "Bring the guns!
"Oh, I care not for caymans; I would fight with a dozen of them!" was the answer given, we were told. The lake and rivers running into it abound with these savage monsters, a species of alligator or crocodile. The man forced his horse into the stream and swam on some way. Suddenly we were startled with the cry of "A cayman! a cayman! Take care, man!"
Their corpses drifted downstream, to catch in the oars of the canoas, a horrible feast for the caymans. The others returned to their comrades on the right or northern bank of the river among the howls of the Indians: "Hey, you dogs, you, go on to the savannah; go on to the savannah, to find out what's in pickle for you."
So there are waters in which sharks are habitual man- eaters, and others where they never touch men; and there are rivers and lakes where crocodiles or caymans are very dangerous, and others where they are practically harmless I have myself seen this in Africa.
They were in most instances too deep to be forded, so we had to wait till we could construct rafts to convey ourselves and our luggage, our horses swimming alongside. We took care to make a great noise to keep the caymans at a distance, lest any of them should think fit to grab at our animals' legs.
After having described, though not always with perfect correctness, several of the characteristics which distinguish crocodiles from caymans, he traces the geographical distribution of those enormous saurians. We set sail on the 9th of March, somewhat incommoded by the extreme smallness of our vessel, which afforded us no sleeping-place but upon deck.
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