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Updated: May 31, 2025
But I have no means of ascertaining how far this is true. These remarks are confirmed by a writer in the "Essex Herald" and by Mr. Waterton.
"One Sunday afternoon," he says, "when a good many people were standing about on the banks of the Orinoco, never dreaming of danger, a great Cayman came suddenly out of the river, seized a man, and carried him off beneath the water, so that he was seen no more." How sad it would have been had Waterton shared a similar fate, in his effort to get the alligator's skin!
"Just before his third journey, Mr. Waterton takes leave of Sir Joseph Banks, and speaks of him with affectionate regret. We talked of stuffing quadrupeds; I agreed that the lips and nose ought to be cut off, and stuffed with wax. This is the way great naturalists take an eternal farewell of each other! "Insects are the curse of tropical climates.
Grant took me occasionally to the meetings of the Wernerian Society, where various papers on natural history were read, discussed, and afterwards published in the 'Transactions. I heard Audubon deliver there some interesting discourses on the habits of N. American birds, sneering somewhat unjustly at Waterton.
"I am glad to see you, Dr. Waterton, for I have exhausted all my remedies," said Lieutenant Fourchon. "I was not born to be a doctor. The patient seems to be no better." "It does not look like a very bad case," added the doctor, finding it necessary to say something, as he felt the pulse of the sufferer.
The male, also, as described by Waterton, has a spiral tube, nearly three inches in length, which rises from the base of the beak. It is jet-black, dotted over with minute downy feathers. This tube can be inflated with air, through a communication with the palate; and when not inflated hangs down on one side.
White spent his life in the south of England, and never travelled. Waterton lived in the north of England, and spent more than ten years in the Forests of Guiana. With all these points of difference, the two naturalists were men of the same kind, and whose lives both teach the same lesson.
He who lives in the country and has the love of outdoor natural history in his heart, will never be lonely and never dull. Waterton himself thought that this love of natural history must be inborn and could not be acquired. If this be so, they ought indeed to be thankful who possess so happy a gift.
"I know the poison well; it was brought over by Mr. Waterton, whose amusing works you may have read. It is called the wourali poison, and is said to be extracted from a sort of creeping vine, which grows in the country. The natives, however, add the poison of snakes to the extract; and the preparation is certainly very fatal, as I can bear witness to." "Have you ever seen it tried?"
Waterton states that he was barefoot, with an old hat, check shirt and trousers on, and a pair of braces to keep them up. His snakeship was pointed out as lying at the roots of a large tree which had been torn up by a whirlwind. But the remainder of the story shall be given in the traveler's own words: I advanced up to the place slow and cautious.
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