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Updated: June 14, 2025
The island of Isabella was beautiful of aspect, with its clear lakes, and thick forests; the Spaniards were never tired of admiring the new type of nature presented to their view, and of which the intense verdure was wonderful to European eyes. Parroquets in innumerable flocks were flying amongst the thick trees, and great lizards, doubtless iguanas, glided with rapid movements in the high grass.
Another rattlesnake which he killed in Central America had just swallowed an opossum which proved to be of a species new to science. Miller told how once on the Orinoco he saw on the bank a small anaconda, some ten feet long, killing one of the iguanas, big, active, truculent, carnivorous lizards, equally at home on the land and in the water.
Monkeys, especially those living in troops, make long emigrations at certain periods, and consequently it happens that at the beginning of the rainy seasons the natives discover round their huts different kinds which they have not before observed. On this same bank our guides showed us a nest of young iguanas only four inches long. It was difficult to distinguish them from common lizards.
In a marshy bit of jungle, a small colony of unwieldy sago palms found root, while pitcher-plants and orchids hung from almost every limb. Clumsy gray iguanas and long-tailed lizards of a brilliant green rushed up the trunks of lichen-covered trees. Troops of monkeys went scattering away on all sides, and black squirrels chattered on in the perfect security of the dim obscurity.
At any rate, the naturalist was preparing to put his impressions and deductions into the form of a paper which he intended to submit to the National Geographic Magazine as soon as he returned to the United States. The more practical Mr. Fitts decided to start a squab farm. A few of the giant iguanas were seen, and many smaller ones. The meat of the iguana is a great delicacy.
Venison was the only meat allowed to be sold in the markets; but there were lizards, iguanas, and snakes, which were exposed freely for sale; and there were large quantities of turtle and tortoise eggs, which had been brought up from the delta.
Poison will be the only method of destroying or reducing the numbers of the iguana, who, robber as he is, yet has his good points, as has even the sneaking, blood-loving native cat for both are merciless foes to snakes of all kinds; and 'tis better to have an energetic and hungry native cat and a score of wily iguanas working havoc among the tenants of your fowl-house than one brown or an equally deadly "bandy-bandy" snake within half a mile.
Then they know that Mayrah has really blown the winter away, for the birds are beginning to pair and build their nests. So they open their eyes and come out on the green earth again. And when the black fellows hear the curreequinquins singing "Goore, goore," they know that they can go out and find iguanas again, and find them fatter than when they went away with the coming of winter.
And, to keep the legs in this position the sharp claw of one foot was thrust through the fleshy part of another foot. The tail of each iguana had been cut off. "What in the world do they do that for?" asked Blake. "That's how they fatten the iguanas," the guide said. "The natives catch them alive, and to keep them from crawling off they fasten their legs in that manner.
"Bery good eat," exclaimed Chickango when he saw the little monsters. "What!" cried out Leo; "you do not mean to say you would eat those hideous creatures?" "I suspect we shall have no objection to do so," said David. "They are varanians, a species of water-lizard, very similar to the iguanas of the New World, which are considered great delicacies. Ugly as they look, they are perfectly harmless."
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