notwithstanding books and schools, there is a vast deal of knowledge to be picked up at every step.
In the morning, as usual, they found the bait gone from the shark-hook. The Indians went into the forest to hunt, the white men took the canoe to shoot fish and get another supply of turtle's eggs, which they found in great abundance. They then went to the little shallow creek, and shot some young caymen about two feet long. When the arrow struck them, tiny as they were, they turned round and bit it, and snapped at the men when they went into the water to take them up.
The day was now declining apace, and the Indian had made his instrument to take the cayman. It was very simple—there were four pieces of tough, hard wood, a foot long, and about as thick as a little finger, and barbed at both ends; they were tied round the end of the rope, in such a manner that if the rope be imagined to be an arrow, these four sticks would form the arrow's head; so that one end of the four united sticks answered to the point of the arrow's head", while the other end expanded at equal distances round the rope.
It was evident, that if the cayman swallowed this (the other end of the rope, which was thirty yards long, being fastened to a tree) the more he pulled the faster the barbs would shut. Nearly a mile from where they had their hammocks, the sandbanks were steep and abrupt, and the river very still and deep; there the Indian fixed the machine, which hung suspended a foot from the water, and the end of the rope was made fast to a stake driven well into the sand.
The Indian then took the empty shell of the land-tortoise, and gave it some heavy blows with a stick.
