After An Exciting Cruise The Alligator Gave A Deep Dive And
The Rope Broke, Giving Him His Liberty Again.
On leaving us he gave
what Waterton describes as "a long-suppressed, shuddering sigh, so
loud and so peculiar
That it can be heard a mile." The bullet had
entered the alligator's head, but next morning we saw he was still
alive and able to "paddle his own canoe." The reader may be surprised
to learn that these repulsive reptiles lay an egg with a pure white
shell, fair to look upon, and that the egg is no larger than a hen's.
One day I was called to see a dead man for whom a kind of wake was
being held. He was lying in state in a grass-built hovel, and raised
up from the mud floor on two packing-cases of suspiciously British
origin. His hard Indian face was softened in death, but the observant
eye could trace a stoical resignation in the features. Several men
and women were sitting around the corpse counting their beads and
drinking native spirits, with a dim, hazy belief that that was the
right thing to do. They had given up their own heathen customs, and,
being civilized, must, of course, be Roman Catholics. They were
"reduced," as Holy Mother Church calls it, long ago, and, of course,
believe that civilization and Roman Catholicism are synonymous terms.
Poor souls! How they stared and wondered when they that morning heard
for the first time the story of Jesus, who tasted death for us that
we might live.
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