"Alligator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man-of-war to enter an American port after the Revolution was the Alligator, Capt. Isaac Coffin. He entered the harbor of Boston on the 2d day of May, 1791. He saluted the American flag on the fort by firing thirteen guns, which was returned. A full report of this occurrence is to be found in the Columbian Sentinel of May ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow
... lizard," replied Hassib, "so your learned white men say; 'alligator lizard' I heard one call it. But it is really a thing that comes out of an ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... light in his bedroom, Northwood examined the wallet. It was made of alligator skin, clasped with a gold signet that bore the initial M. The first pocket was empty; the second yielded an object that sent a warm ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... the boats were despatched up the river, but as the ebb-tide ran until after four o'clock it was late at night before they reached the cascade, having experienced some delay by running upon the sandbanks, which, above Alligator Island, are very numerous and form a narrow winding channel of not more than twelve feet deep; these banks are dry at low-water, and are composed of a yellow quartzose sand. At midnight, as soon as the launch and cutter were loaded, for it did not take more than half an hour ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... informed by several of the gravest and most trustworthy gentlemen of several different localities on the mountains that there really is a creature infesting these streams supposed by them to be a young alligator, reaching a length of twelve inches, and doubtless subsisting on fish. An alligator as a mountain-reptile had not entered into our conception: can these voracious saurians, playing in the alpine affluents of the Mississippi, possibly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... spring when the first midges dance and warm days lure the last-year's butterfly, the scarlet of the cardinals begins to flicker through the ivory smoke of the mosses. Then the alligator leaves his winter ooze, and the widening "O" of the ripple which his gar-like nose makes, travels slowly across the sullen ponds, where the pendant gonfalons of the mosses kiss their imaginary duplicates, hanging head downward in the ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... after, O bull of Bharata's race, Drona, accompanied by all of his pupils, went to the bank of the Ganga to bathe in that sacred stream. And when Drona had plunged into the stream, a strong alligator, sent as it were, by Death himself seized him by the thigh. And though himself quite capable, Drona in a seeming hurry asked his pupil to rescue him. And he said, 'O, kill this monster and rescue me.' Contemporaneously with this speech, Vibhatsu (Arjuna) struck the monster within the water ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... "the principal chief or king of this part of the Timmannee country, is about ninety years of age, with a mottled, shrivelled-up skin, resembling in colour that of an alligator more than that of a human being, with dim, greenish eyes, far sunk in his head, and a bleached, twisted beard, hanging down about two feet from his chin; like the king of the opposite district he wore a necklace of coral and leopard's teeth, but his mantle was brown and dirty as his skin. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... They say the alligator, the rhinoceros, though enclosed in bullet-proof mail, have each a spot where they are vulnerable; and fierce, reckless, unbelieving reprobates, have commonly this point ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... on the jam and was clawing out the butt of a log with a rude sort of boat-hook. It slid forward slowly as an alligator moves, three or four others followed it, and the green water spouted through the gaps they had made. Then the villagers howled and shouted and scrambled across the logs, pulling and pushing the obstinate timber, and the red head of Namgay Doola was chief among them ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... found in great abundance in the woods about the mouth of the river, and, for aught I know, in every part of the country. You perceive that I am constantly discovering new luxuries for my table. Not having been able to kill a crocodile (alligator), I have offered a reward for one, which I mean to eat, dressed in soup, fricassees, and steaks. Oh! how you long to partake ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... set out in the Quorra and Alburkah. Attack of the natives. Leave Eboe. Mortality on board the vessels. Capture of an alligator. Aspect of the Niger near the Kong Mountains. The Quorra aground. Fundah. Mr. Laird returns to the coast. Richard Lander wounded. His death. ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... grasped it, when—in the millionth part of a second, as it seemed to me, so rapid was it—there was a flashing swirl of water directly in front of the deer, and before the startled creature had time to make so much as a single movement to save itself, an immense alligator had seized it by a foreleg and was tug-tugging at it in an endeavour to drag it into deep water. The deer, however, though taken by surprise and at a disadvantage, was evidently determined not to yield ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... The African alligator persists in keeping out of sight. You never see anything but his head—except his tail, as represented here." Tiffles pointed with his wand to something that looked like the end of a fence rail sticking out of the water. "True Art, sir, sacrifices ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... for our paper, giving the small list of guests and the long line of refreshments—which included alligator-pear salad, right out of the Smart Set Cook Book. Moreover, when Jefferson appeared in Topeka that fall, Priscilla Winthrop, who had met him through some of her Duxbury friends in Boston, invited him to run down for a luncheon with her and the members of the royal family who ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... to the westward. Shore skirted by rocks; timber noble, and the forest clear of brushwood, enabling us to penetrate with ease as far as caution permitted. Traces of wild beasts numerous and recent, but none discovered. Fresh-water streams coloured as yesterday, and the trail of an alligator from one of them to the sea. This dark forest, where the trees shoot up straight and tall, and are succeeded by generation after generation varying in stature, but struggling upward, strikes the imagination with pictures trite yet true. It was thus I meditated in ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... so unartificial that Theresa, facing Mr. Wrenn, was bored. And the menu was foreign without being Society viands. It suggested rats' tails and birds' nests, she was quite sure. She would gladly have experimented with pate de foie gras or alligator-pears, but what social prestige was there to be gained at the factory by remarking that she "always did like pahklava"? Mr. Wrenn did not see that she was glancing about discontentedly, for he was delightedly listening ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... regiment acted in East Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, in the course of which service I was in several engagements against the enemy—viz., at the Alligator Bridge, in East Florida; at Doctor Brimstone's Plantation, in Georgia; at New Port Meeting-house, in Georgia; at New Port Bridge, in Georgia; at Stone Ferry, in South Carolina; and afterwards at the reduction ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... equally akin, it would appear, to the lizards and the batrachians; and what seems to be the Upper Old Red of the United States has exhibited the foot-tracks of a larger animal of the same class, which not a little resemble those which would be impressed on recent sand or clay by the alligator of the Mississippi, did not the alligator of the Mississippi efface its own footprints (a consequence of the shortness of its legs) by the trail of its abdomen. In the Coal Measures, the reptiles hitherto found,—and it is still ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... and roll the log; Hard pillow, but a soldier's head That's half the time in brake and bog Must never think of softer bed. The owl is hooting to the night, The cooter [10] crawling o'er the bank, And in that pond the flashing light Tells where the alligator sank. ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... Great piles there were of delicious big oranges, green but perfectly sweet, and of equally refreshing little green limes; pineapples and bananas, green, yellow, and red, guava, and custard apples, alligator pears, melons, and sour sops, and ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... harbors: Alligator Pond, Discovery Bay, Kingston, Montego Bay, Ocho Rios, Port Antonio, ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to be obliged to tell it, but something is going to happen to Bully and Bawly very soon. In fact, I think it is going to take place at once. Just excuse me a moment, will you, until I look out of the window and see if the alligator is coming. Yes, there he is. He just got off the trolley car. The conductor put him off because he had ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... around after us tellin' me not to be frightened, an' givin' Cupid a tongue-handlin' that would 'a' stung a deaf alligator. When I can't hold in any longer I rolls over on a dievan—that's what they call a hotel sofy—an' get Cupid in my arms an' make a sound as if he was stranglin' me. Bill gets Cupid by the collar an' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... a big alligator acomin' surgin' and heavin' down the river, tryin' to drink up all the wather; or ilse it's that bully old Comfort swimmin' along, wid a bone in her teeth," declared Jimmie, after he had had a turn ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... are degenerating. The Fannies of our island—though this I say with reluctance—are not visibly improving; and the Bath road is notoriously superannuated. Crocodiles, you will say, are stationary. Mr. Waterton tells me that the crocodile does not change,—that a cayman, in fact, or an alligator, is just as good for riding upon as he was in the time of the Pharaohs. That may be; but the reason is that the crocodile does not live fast—he is a slow coach. I believe it is generally understood among naturalists that the crocodile is a blockhead. It is my own impression ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... every imaginable hue were put into great machines where heavy squares of copper, set in powerful presses, stamped upon them various patterns or impressions. The designs engraved on the dies were imitations of the texture of every known sort of fancy leather. There was alligator, lizard skin, pigskin, snakeskin and sealskin; even grained leather was copied. So perfect was the likeness that it seemed impossible to tell the embossed and artificially ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... moment, the menagerie contains a female elephant only, the male having died since my arrival in Paris, three dromedaries, two camels, five lions, male and female, a white bear, a brown bear, a mangousta, a civet, an alligator, an ostrich, and several other scarce and curious animals, the number and variety of which receive frequent additions. In other parts of the garden are inclosures for land and sea fowls, as well ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... rivers, forests, mountains, cataracts, prairies, and inland seas were to find in him their antitype and voice. Shaggy he was to be, brown-fisted, careless of proprieties, unhampered by tradition, his Pegasus of the half-horse, half-alligator breed. By him at last the epos of the New World was to be fitly sung, the great tragi-comedy of democracy put upon the stage for all time. It was a cheap vision, for it cost no thought; and, like all judicious prophecy, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Fritz's barbed wire and dugouts and machine gun emplacements can't stand for a minute against these tanks! Why, Tom, they can crawl on their back as well as any other way, and they don't mind a shower of shrapnel or a burst of machine gun lead, any more than an alligator minds a swarm of gnats. The only thing that makes 'em hesitate a bit is a Jack Johnson or a Bertha shell, and it's got to be a pretty big one, and in the right place, to do much damage. These tanks are great, and ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... 6 o'clock a.m., we got under weigh, and steamed up to the mouth of the Alligator river, where we arrived at 9 o'clock a.m. The Shamrock was lying close by. The weather was cold. At 1:30 o'clock p.m., the Valley City proceeded up the Alligator river. At 7 p.m. we anchored off Newport News. On the 10th, at 4 a.m., two armed boats' crews were sent ashore on a reconnoitering ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... only knows what had been in this one,—an alligator, maybe, or a snake. He's very fond of snakes. He says some of them are so useful. I try to be charitable, Fairy, and I believe I would give even Satan credit for any good there was in him,—but it is too much to ask me to be fond of a man who is fond of snakes. ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... actually seems to proceed before our eyes; in every dyke the water-snakes are gliding about with their graceful crests reared above the surface, and on lake and lagoon bask shoals of mullet, rejoicing in the warm waters of the swamp. The lazy alligator is dragging himself across the path, newly roused from his winter lair. The cardinal, the mocking-bird, and the gaudy red-bird, are all darting to and fro, in pursuit of the various insects that ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... and sometimes like an avalanche. He swam alone in the deep holes, and sometimes shut his eyes and stood on the bottom, just keeping the end of his trunk out of the water. One day he was obliged to kneel on the broad back of an alligator who tried to bite off his foot. He drove the long body down into the muddy bottom, and no living creature, except possibly the catfish that burrow in the mud, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... a table and he was taking a walk and he fell into a pond of water and an alligator bit him and then he came up out of the pond of water and he stepped into a trap that some hunters had set for him, and turned a somersault on ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... great-grandfather who discovered a cure for scurvy." A missionary's box of toys for some Christmas tree in Far North fastnesses is opened, and here a native stops work to lead along the sand a pink-and-blue alligator. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... for my inspection. The tail was about ten inches in length, nearly five inches wide at the broadest part and perhaps an inch thick. The skin that covered the tail was dark in color and very tough, suggestive of alligator skin. The meat of the beaver tail was much prized by explorers and trappers, and visitors, such as I, were often given this meat as ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... feet, and, considering their intense pugnacity, a crab of such dimensions would be as formidable a creature as one could well imagine. And their amphibious capacity would give them an advantage against us such as at present is only to be found in the case of the alligator or crocodile. If we imagine a shark that could raid out upon the land, or a tiger that could take refuge in the sea, we should have a fair suggestion of what a terrible monster a large predatory crab might prove. And so far as zoological science goes we must, at least, admit that such a creature ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... or lucius in the southern states of North America up to 12 ft. in length, and the small A. sinensis in the Yang-tse-kiang. In Central and South America alligators are represented by five species of the genus Caiman, which differs from Alligator by the absence of a bony septum between the nostrils, and the ventral armour is composed of overlapping bony scutes, each of which is formed of two parts united by a suture. C. sclerops, the spectacled ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... with distended jaws for the swimmer. The saint, of course, orders the beast back just at the moment when all seemed over, and is instantly obeyed. The characteristics of the monster could not be more closely identical with those of the crocodile or alligator, had the incident been narrated in Egypt ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... proved readily adaptable to the wild life about her, no less did Philip. At night he smoked comfortably by his camp fire, unwound the hullabaloo upon request or lent it to Sho-caw. He rode hard and fearlessly with the warriors, hunted bear and alligator, acquired uncommon facility in the making of sof-ka, the tribal stew, and helped in the tanning of pelts and ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... versions of this lexicon derived 'baz' as a Stanford corruption of {bar}. However, Pete Samson (compiler of the {TMRC} lexicon) reports it was already current when he joined TMRC in 1958. He says "It came from "Pogo". Albert the Alligator, when vexed or outraged, would shout 'Bazz Fazz!' or 'Rowrbazzle!' The club layout was said to model the (mythical) New England counties of Rowrfolk and Bassex (Rowrbazzle ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... ends. Let buns and sugar for the future charm; These will delight, and feed, and work no harm While Punch, the grinning, merry imp of sin, Invites th' unwary wanderer to a kiss, Smiles in his face, as though he meant him bliss, Then, like an alligator, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... through his exertions had amassed the large fortune which he was now enjoying. He was a merry-hearted man, with excellent sound sense on all points except one—that one being the fair sex, with which he was about as well acquainted as an alligator with a camera-obscure. The attentions paid to him by Arthurine seemed to please the old bachelor uncommonly. There was a mixture of kindness, malice, and fascination in her manner, which was really enchanting; even the matter-of-fact ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... almost disconsolately for some sign of life. What sort of life he expected it to be if it appeared, he did not very clearly know. He has since confessed that he thinks that in his subconsciousness he expected an alligator. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... America, and the spider monkey; the iguana, largest land lizard known to history, and alligators. Alligators are confined to the Western Hemisphere; crocodiles were supposed to be peculiar to the East, but lately a true crocodile (Crocodilus Americanus) has been identified in Florida. The alligator covers its eggs with a heap of rubbish for warmth and so leaves them; the African crocodile, on the contrary, buries them in the sand and then sits over them. The cardinal bird and the ocellated turkey must not be forgotten. Here may be found the leaf-cutting ants, which store the leaf ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... old chief, Micanopy, and his sub-chiefs, Jumper and Alligator, Osceola learned the details of that day's action. About two hundred warriors had taken their station in the outskirts of the swamp to await the coming of Major Dade and his one hundred and ten soldiers. They sent ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... was, while crossing a small savannah with his companions, who had gone on ahead, nearly losing his life. He perceived the strong scent of an alligator; directly afterwards he stumbled over one, and fell into the water. Recovering, he shouted to the other men, but they, terror-stricken, were flying towards the woods. A second, and even a third time he fell, every moment expecting to be seized by the jaws of the horrid ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... had had so many things to think of and talk about, that she had not thought much about Harvey except at night. Then that awful alligator haunted her until she wanted to call her mamma, but she had not dared because ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... that calls the porter. Larry wore this air of official aloofness even on the street, where there were no car-windows to compromise his dignity. At the end of his run he stepped indifferently from the train along with the passengers, his street hat on his head and his conductor's cap in an alligator-skin bag, went directly into the station and changed his clothes. It was a matter of the utmost importance to him never to be seen in his blue trousers away from his train. He was usually cold and distant with men, but with all women he had a silent, grave familiarity, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... crocodiles. The gap between the existing crocodiles and the lizards is very wide, but as we go back in geological time we meet with fossil forms which are to some extent intermediate and form a connected series. The three living genera—Crocodilus, Alligator, and Gavialis—are found in the Eocene formation, and allied forms of another genus, Holops, in the Chalk. From the Chalk backward to the Lias another group of genera occurs, having anatomical characteristics ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the moment when Mrs. Hignett was crunching the gravel of the drive, Eustace was lying in bed, listening to Jane Hubbard as she told the story of how an alligator had once got into her tent while she was camping on the banks of the Issawassi River in Central Africa. Ever since he had become ill, it had been the large-hearted girl's kindly practice to soothe him to rest with some such narrative from her ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... have fallen foul of an alligator," said Poore, "all the creeks on Rook Island are full of them. Come along, and let us see what ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... this journey that he saw the most magnificent residence that he had ever beheld, the home of an old friend of his, an alligator, who possessed a number of such palatial mansions and could change his residence at any time by the simple process of swimming from one ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... post on the next corner he took out of his alligator-skin wallet a folded paper, very much worn on the creases, and holding it so that the light caught it he skimmed ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... "An 'Alligator' press," he said, "like the one in the Standard office. It ought to be oiled, though. It needs adjusting, too. No wonder it would not work. I can ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... I'm away. I've bought a ranch, for fruit only, on the East Coast, between Palm Beach and Miami, but not paying these expensive prices, no, not never. And I shall live there for better but not for worse, for richer, but most positively not for poorer. I pick my own alligator pears off my own tree unless I want to sell them for fifteen cents on the tree. Bathing, one-half ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... beside being elaborately carved, and inlaid with bits of crystal, porcelain, mother-of-pearl, and jade, is richly enamelled and gilt. The stem, which rises ten or eleven feet from the bows, represents the nagha mustakha sapta, the seven-headed serpent or alligator. A phrasat, or elevated throne (also termed p'hra-the-nang), occupies the centre, supported by four pillars. The extraordinary beauty of the inlaying of shells, mother-of-pearl, crystal, and precious stones of every color, the splendor of the gilding, and the elegance of the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... he thought; "and instead of following the horrible brute here have I run away; and now how am I to find the way that it pointed out? That's soon done," he said, as he thought of the broken and crushed-down canes which must mark the alligator's track; and he began at once to search for what proved to be absent. There were bruised and trampled growths which he sprang at directly, but his reason soon pointed to the fact that they had not been made by the huge lizard ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... it made its appearance at a shop in Boston, before the door of which was seen a striped pole. In the interior was displayed a stuffed alligator, a rattlesnake's skin, a bundle of Indian arrows, an old-fashioned matchlock gun, a walking-stick of Governor Winthrop's, a wig of old Cotton Mather's, and a colored print of the Boston massacre. In short, it ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... alligator, but we cannot tell; we only know it was a particular breed, and only used to convey wrath. Some authorities think it was an ichthyosaurus, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to the top of the water. Hop was English, and Englishmen are apt to call all saurians by this name. I should not have expected to see the real alligator so near the salt water, for I had heard that only crocodiles proper lived or thrived in salt water. It may have been one washed out from some bayou by the high water, which was prevailing at this time, or it may have been the real crocodile. ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... The capataz at once pulled out his revolver, all of us doing likewise, only to have to put them back again, as the dot had disappeared as quickly as it came. This was the first sign of wild animal life we saw, the "jacare" or alligator. In the more civilised parts of the Chaco, these animals, as well as the carpincho or water-hog, are getting quite rare, and having been so much shot at and worried they need the ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... water, I despatched Mr. Baines, with Phibbs, Shewell, and Dawson, in the gig to bring up the sheep, the long-boat also going down the river with a crew from the vessel to bring up the kedge anchor and warp from Alligator Island, and also to assist in bringing up the sheep. In the evening there was a fine breeze from the east, and the thermometer fell to 65 degrees during the night. A few days before our arrival one of the kangaroo dogs had been seized by an alligator, ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... and a great promoter of commotion,—by which latter service he keeps the community alive to the presence of impure particles in the social element, if he does not assist in getting rid of them. An alligator in an aquarium might furnish a better comparison for him ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... likely that the animal indicated by the Mexican name of the day is mythical, represented according to locality by some known animal which seems to indicate best the mythical conception. Some figures evidently refer to the alligator, and others apparently to the iguana; that on plates 4 and 5 of the Dresden Codex is purely ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... "Seven-fifteen! Aren't you ever going to get up for breakfast?" and he was not a hero-scientist but a rather irritable and commonplace man who needed a shave. They had coffee, griddle-cakes, and sausages, and talked about Mrs. McGanum's atrocious alligator-hide belt. Night witchery and morning disillusion were alike forgotten in the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... unique among rivers. I think God wished to teach the beauty of a virile soul fighting its way toward peace—and His precept was the Missouri. To me, the Amazon is a basking alligator; the Tiber is a dream of dead glory; the Rhine is a fantastic fairy-tale; the Nile a mummy, periodically resurrected; the Mississippi, a convenient geographical boundary line; the Hudson, ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... EXERCITUS COMITIA AMERICANA. (The American Congress to General Anthony Wayne.) America, personified as an Indian queen, standing, and having at her feet a bow, an alligator, and the American shield, presents to General Wayne a laurel and a mural ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... flowering trees, some strikingly beautiful specimens of the alligator-pear in full bloom were observed, the blossom suggesting the passion-flower. While our favorite garden plants at the North are satisfied to bloom upon lowly bushes, at the South they are far more ambitious, and develop into tall trees, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... and georgette and alligator pears; and Hosea Brewster was in the habit of dropping around to the Elks' Club, up above Schirmer's furniture store on Elm Street, at about five in the afternoon on his way home from the cold-storage plant. The ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... period, appears to have been of a tropical character. The climatic and seasonal divisions were not at all pronounced, and both animal and vegetable life took on gigantic and grotesque forms. In the ugliness of alligator and rhinoceros and hippopotamus of our day we get some hint of what early reptilian ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... number. There's nothing he's done that isn't on the tumble since last night. The financial gang that he downed are out already against him. They'll have his economic blood. He made a splash while he was at it, but the alligator's got him. It's 'Exit ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... The inhabitants, on learning the joyful news, carried the knight and the Lindwurm in triumph into the city of Bruenn, where they have ever since treasured up the memento of their former tyrant. The animal, or reptile, thus preserved, is undoubtedly of the crocodile or alligator species, although I regret it was not in my power to examine it more particularly, evening having set in when I saw it in the arched passage leading to the town-hall of the city where it has been suspended. I fear ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... South America swarm with crocodiles, and these wage perpetual war with the jaguars. It is said, that when the jaguar surprises the alligator asleep on the hot sandbank, he attacks him in a vulnerable part under the tail, and often kills him, but let the crocodile only get his antagonist into the water, and the tables are turned, for the jaguar is held under water ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... do with this case?" I asked. "I got insured in the Wabash Mutual Internecine company against accident, and here I 've had an accident! Ivy poison is as severe an accident as can happen to any animal, except, perhaps, an alligator or a rhinoceros, and I think I 'm entitled to ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... also alligator-pears, limes, and oranges. There is something about those oranges I should like to have explained. They are usually green and sweetish in taste, nor have they much white pith, but now and again you get a big ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Rough alligator finished photograph mounts will not receive a good impression from a die. If a carbon paper is placed on the mounts before making the impression, a good clear imprint will be ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... tall palmettoes came the roar of the great ocean. The blue sky sparkled over us every day; now and then we met a little solitary craft; countless water-fowl were scattered about on the surface of the stream; a school of mullet was usually jumping into the air; an alligator might sometimes be seen steadily swimming across the river, with only his nose and back exposed; and nearly always, either to the right or to the left, going north or going south, were seven pelicans, slowly flopping ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... thought Schomberg, going away thankful at being relieved of the alligator-hunter's company. He wondered what these fellows were, without being able to form a guess of sufficient probability. Their names he learned that very day by direct inquiry "to enter in my books," he explained in his formal military ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... it, is not to be dreamt of; and our residence, as far as I can learn, is to be a half-furnished house in the midst of rice-swamps, where our habitual company will be our slaves, and our occasional visitors an alligator or two ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Julian]; so I was battling on as well as I could, with a stout heart and a steady arm, when—don't be afraid—a Catamaran caught me! If you haven't fainted (bless those pretty eyes of your's, my Emmy!) read on; and you will find that this alarming sort of animal is neither an albatross nor an alligator, but simply—a life-boat with a Triton in the stern. Yes, God's messenger of life to me and happiness to you, my girl, came in the shape of a kindly, chattering, blue-skinned, human creature, who dragged me out of the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... did not fancy the man—not that he was on the surface other than a rough woods rover, with a laugh like the roar of a bull alligator, and a heartiness that seemed genuine enough; but something about his eyes caused the ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... accordion and fiddle, the evening would pass in rude and harmless jollity, unless too many tin cups or gourds of fiery liquor excited the always ready pugnacity of the men. They were ready to brag of their valor, and to put their boasts to the test. They were "half horse, half alligator," according to their own favorite expression, equally prepared with knife or pistol, fist, or the trained thumb that gouged out an antagonist's eye, unless he speedily called for mercy. "I'm a Salt River roarer!" bawled one in the presence of a foreign diarist. ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... laughing of the operators and onlookers she heard piercing screams, as strong arms plied the alligator hide, and one by one the girls came running into her, bleeding and quivering in the agony of pain. By and by the opiate did its work and all sank ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... mysterious lot of adventures through which any member of the Club ever passed. The details of what happened, however, must be reserved for the next volume in this series, which will be published under the title: "THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB IN FLORIDA; Or, Laying the Ghost of Alligator Swamp." ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... possessing his advantages of a seaboard. The Western States are the pioneers of civilization, and have a dauntless, less educated, and more turbulent character, approaching, as you draw towards the setting sun, very much to the half-horse, half-alligator, and paving the way for the arts and sciences of Europe with the rifle and ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... thinking of this as I stood contemplating an alligator slide, when Grue came back saying that the shore on which we had landed was the termination of a shell-mound, and that it was the only dry place ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... his son had been devoured by a big fish, so he rowed homeward. When he reached home, his wife anxiously asked if Carancal was dead; and the husband said, "Yes." They then cooked their meal and began to eat. But their supper was not half finished when Carancal came in, carrying a big alligator. He again asked his father why he had left him alone to bring such a big load. The father said, "I thought you had been killed by a large fish." Carancal then asked his mother to cook him a cavan of rice, for he was tired from ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... a girl, aged seven and four years, were playing at low tide on a mud bank close to their dwelling, and some 15 yards from the water, when an alligator, which had advanced unperceived, seized the younger, and was making for the water with the child in its jaws. The little girl, on seeing this, had the presence of mind to leap on the animal's back and plunge her fingers into its eyes, when it instantly dropped ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... domesticated. The tall mango-tree, with rich, glossy leaves, the branches bending under the weight of its delicious fruit, is seen growing everywhere, though it is not a native of these islands. Among other fruit-trees we observe the feathery tamarind, orange, lime, alligator-pear, citron-fig, date, and rose apple. Of all the flowering trees, the most conspicuous and attractive is one which bears a cloud of brilliant scarlet blossoms, each cluster ball-shaped and as large as a Florida orange. Some of the thoroughfares are lined by pretty, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... unconscious, expressive gesture, scornful and abrupt, with which she neglected them might have been terribly wounding to a young man more sensitive than Dayson. But Dayson, in his self-sufficient, good-natured mediocrity, had the hide of an alligator. He even judged her movement quite natural, for he was a flunkey born. Hilda gazed at her master with anxiety as he deposited his black walking-stick in the corner behind the door and loosed his white muffler ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... night when the lizard was on the outside of a pane of glass, with a candle on the inside. There is, I believe, no class of living creatures in which the gradations can be traced with such minuteness and regularity as in this; where, from the small animal just described, to the huge alligator or crocodile, a chain may be traced containing almost innumerable links, of which the remotest have a striking resemblance to each other, and seem, at first view, to differ ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... listeners through screens who had forgotten to forget. No men died ever by the silken cord, and no tales ever reached the outside world of who did die down in the echoing brick cellars; there was a path that led underground to the alligator tank and a trap-door that opened just above the water edge. Night, and the fungus-fouled long jaws, and slimy, weed-filled water—the creak of rusty hinges—a splash—the bang of a falling trap—a swirl ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... of the curious lizard found in our Western Territories and in Mexico, and variously known as the "Montana alligator," "the Gila monster," and "the Mexican heloderma," is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... head mistress of the Diocesan School at Amherst near Rangoon, and her pupils were bathing in the sea when one of them was bitten in the leg by a shark or alligator. Alarmed by this terrible shock she lost her balance and was being carried away by the tide when her sister and the head mistress both went to the rescue. Miss Grace Darling had succeeded in getting hold of her when she too was bitten and disappeared ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... of anything more destructive of the whole theoretic faculty, not to say of the Christian character and human intellect, than those accursed sports in which man makes of himself, cat, tiger, serpent, chaetodon, and alligator in one, and gathers into one continuance of cruelty for his amusement all the devices that brutes sparingly and at intervals use against each other for ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... Paul on a Northern bound boat and bought him many little presents ere wishing him God speed. Among them and prized most highly, were two red birds and a young alligator. At five o'clock that evening came the order: "All aboard! Haul in your gang- planks!" Just then a weird musical chant was struck up by the slaves working on the levee, which was answered by the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... banks of the Oronoko assert, that previously to an alligator going in search of prey, it always swallows a large stone, that it may acquire additional weight to aid it in diving and dragging its victims under water. A traveller being somewhat incredulous on this point, Bolivar, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... very few years, during which he became expert in climbing, swimming, loading the rifle, and using the spear. He was bold enough to attack the raccoon and otter, and was not afraid even of the alligator; few of his age were more hardy, or could bear an equal degree of fatigue. His kind protector, who adopted him as his own child, took him over to England in the year 1840. But I have given you a long account. May Nikkanochee become ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... island, they leaped out of it together. Stam hurried up to a huge alligator and took deliberate aim before pulling the trigger; but, to his chagrin, the alligator still blinked at him after the hammer ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... richer field of natural science study for the common schools. Among animals are the beaver, otter, squirrel, coon, bear, fox, wildcat, deer, buffalo, domestic animals, wild turkeys, ducks, pigeons, eagle, hawk, wild bees, cat-fish, sword-fish, turtle, alligator, and many more. Among native products and fruits are mentioned corn, pumpkins, beans, huckleberries, grapes, strawberries, cranberries, tobacco, pawpaw, mulberry, haw, plum, apple, and persimmon. Of trees are oak, hickory, walnut, cypress, pine, birch, beech, and others. ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... aged man, moving his flat, carpet-slippered feet a laborious inch; "alligator. Alligator not goin' take you 'cross lake. No use lookin'. 'Ow Peter goin' come when win' ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... ha!" laughed the Senior Partner, in great glee. "You see I have my head screwed on the right way! But to answer you. GOTEMON's Patent Alligator's Skin Braces are attracting much attention just now, so is WIPE's Castle 2 Imperial William Champagne, which finds (I may observe confidentially) a ready sale at thirty-two shillings the dozen. Then there are AKE's Electric Tooth-brushes, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... refreshments; but my fishers from the other side of the bay told me of having seen great store of beasts bones, and bones certainly have once had flesh. George Evans, one of the Hector's men, was severely bitten by an alegarta, [alligator.] I gave orders to fill our water casks with all speed, and propose in the mean time to seek for refreshment. The tide flows here nearest east,[161] and rises high. The 21st we saw four natives, to whom I sent some beads and other baubles, making them understand by signs that we were in want of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... latter was of a light green colour, harmonising well with a pair of flowing yellow nankeen trousers, and a pink waistcoat, from the bosom of which, amidst a large bunch of the splendid flowers of the magnolia, protruded part of a young alligator, which seemed more anxious to glide through the muddy waters of a swamp than to spend its life swinging to and fro amongst folds of the finest lawn. The gentleman held in one hand a cage full of richly-plumed ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... with his club, and paddled for the shore. When he got near the shore, the alligators left him. He went a little farther up the river, and got some fish. When he came back, he kept close to the shore. One alligator twelve feet long followed him. When Bartram went ashore near his camp, the creature crept close to his feet, and lay there looking at him for ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston
... know all about it. Secret no longer. Dr. MORTIMER GRANVILLE has told the Times how it's done. Consider it great shame. Takes the bread, so t' speak, out of one's mouth." Here the Sage gave a lurch and seated himself accidentally on a stuffed alligator. Seeing that his host was about to indulge in an untimely nap, PETER thought the moment had arrived to urge him to reveal his wonderful secret. "I implore you to tell me how you have managed to live for so many years when all your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... a little alligator," explained the housekeeper. "He's real friendly, though his tail scratches when he rubs it against your hand as you ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... Colonel Taylor in Florida was his victory of OKEE-CHOBEE, which was gained on the 25th of December, 1837. The action was very severe, and continued nearly four hours. The Indians, under the command of Alligator and Sam Jones, numbered about 700 warriors, and were posted in a dense hammock, with their front covered by a small stream, almost impassable on account of quicksands, and with their flanks secured by swamps that prevented all access. Colonel Taylor's force ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Well, indeed might the shade of Apicius[A] lament that America and turtle were not discovered in his days. There were the guanas, too, in abundance, with their mouths sewed up to prevent their biting; these are excellent food, although bearing so near a resemblance to the alligator, and its diminutive European representative, the harmless lizard. Muscovy ducks, parrots, monkeys, pigeons, and fish. Pine apples abounded, oranges, pomegranates, limes, Bavarias, plantains, love apples, Abbogada pears (better known by the name of subaltern's butter), and ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... no mood for praying; and putting forth his slabs of arms like the paws of an alligator, he tried to grapple his foe by the throat. The cries of the mother now mingled with those of the child as he put out his little arms to shield his black protector. The ruffian, foiled in his purpose, with baffled rage evaded ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... of the census frequently involves hardship and peril, requiring arduous journeys by dog-team in the frozen north and by launch in the snake-haunted and alligator-filled Everglades of Florida, while the enumerator whose work lies among the dangerous criminal classes of the greater cities must take his life ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... be sure, there are in Ohio three effigies, in Georgia two, and in Dakota some bowlder mosaics in animal form. None of these, however, are like the Wisconsin type. The alligator and serpent of Ohio are different in location and structure from the Wisconsin mounds, and are of designs peculiar. The bird mound in the Newark circle is more like a Wisconsin effigy, but is associated with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... curious objects is dimly discernible; not articles of furniture, for these are few, but things appertaining to the craft in which Shebotha is supposed to have skill—demonology. There are the bones and skins of monkeys, with those of snakes, lizards, and other reptiles; teeth of the alligator and jaguar; the proboscis-like snouts of the tapir and tamanoir, or great ant-bear, with a variety of other like oddities, furnished by the indigenous creatures of the Chaco in every department of the zoological world—birds, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... want to tell you about a young alligator and a water turtle papa had. He kept the turtle in the cellar, and the alligator in an earthen tank; but when it came winter he put that in the cellar too, in a tight box with air-holes. Some time afterward he went to look at the turtle and the alligator, ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... more reasserts itself—we find in Western Australia, the Swan, the Irwin, the Greenough, the Murchison, and the Gascoyne, the Ashburton, the Fortescue, the De Grey, and another Fitzroy. On the north coast, we meet with the Victoria, the Daly, the Adelaide, the Alligator, the Liverpool, the Roper, the Limmen Bight, the Macarthur, the Robinson and the Calvert, the Albert—which is the outlet for the Nicholson and the Gregory—the Leichhardt and the Flinders, the Norman, the Gilbert, the Einesleigh, the Mitchell, the Archer, the Jardine, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... a fish or a stag, is little more than a transient rage at a rival who comes in presence of the female he himself covets or has appropriated. This murderous wrath at a rival is a feeling which, as a matter of course a human savage may share with a wolf or an alligator; and in its ferocious indulgence primitive man places himself on a level with brutes—nay, below them, for in the struggle he often kills the female, which an animal never does. This wrath is not jealousy as we know it; it lacks a number of essential moral, intellectual, imaginative ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... venomous serpents I have really seen are grey, brick-red, or brown, variously mottled; and the most awful serpent I have seen, the Egyptian asp, is precisely of the color of gravel, or only a little greyer. So, again, the crocodile and alligator are grey, but the innocent lizard green and beautiful. I do not mean that the rule is invariable, otherwise it would be more convincing than the lessons of the natural universe are intended ever to be; there are beautiful colors ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... accomplishments! she would have stuffed an alligator, or pickled a lizard, with any apothecary's wife in the kingdom. Why, she could decipher a prescription, and invent the ingredients, almost as well as myself: then she was such a hand at making foreign waters!—for Seltzer, ...
— St. Patrick's Day • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... behind the wagon, a light "prairie schooner" drawn by two stout horses, and driven by an old French Canadian. I wear a sombrero, silk neckerchief, fringed buckskin shirt, sealskin chaparajos or riding-trousers; alligator-hide boots; and with my pearl-hilted revolver and beautifully finished Winchester rifle, I shall feel able ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... bank of the stream was a clump of small trees and reeds which I walked up to examine with a desire to recognise any trees belonging to known species, but to my horror, on looking into the reeds, I saw what appeared to be a huge alligator fast asleep. The men now peeped at it and all agreed that it was an alligator. I therefore retreated to a respectful and suitable distance and let fly at it with a rifle; it gave, as we thought, a kind of shake, and then took no further ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... Jackal and the Alligator (page 100) is a good illustration of this type. It is a character-story. In the naive form of a folk tale, it doubtless embodies the observations of a seeing eye, in a country and time when the little jackal and the great alligator were even more vivid images of certain human characters than they now are. Again and again, surely, the author or authors of the tales must have seen the weak, small, clever being triumph over the bulky, well-accoutred, ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... the boatmen who professionally propelled the keels and flats of the Ohio, they were a class unto themselves—"half horse, half alligator," a contemporary styled them. Rough fellows, much given to fighting, and drunkenness, and ribaldry, with a genius for coarse drollery and stinging repartee. The river towns suffered sadly at the hands of this lawless, dissolute element. Each boat carried from thirty to forty ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... famed, as most woody places are, for snakes and poisonous reptiles: the country people will scarcely move abroad after nightfall for fear of them, and always carry a charm about their person to prevent injury from their bite. This charm is an alligator's tooth, stuffed with herbs, compounded and muttered over ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... happen," said Haltren, reflectively, closing the breech of his gun. He had hauled his boat up an alligator-slide; now he shoved it off the same way, and pulling up his hip-boots, waded out, laid his gun in the stern, threw cartridge-sack and a dozen dead ducks after it, and embarked among the raft ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... they was centipedes. Frank Goodwin will take cases of 'em. The Geddies want about eleven pairs between 'em. Clancy is going to invest the savings of weeks, and even old Doc Gregg wants three pairs of alligator-hide slippers if they've got any tens. Blanchard got a look at Miss Hemstetter; and as he's a Frenchman, no less than a dozen pairs will ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... champion the Zulus, but for all that you do not sympathize with them. No doubt you know the Zulu way of cooking tomatoes and the Zulu prayer before blowing one's nose; but for all that you don't understand them as well as I do, who don't know an assegai from an alligator. You are more learned, Chadd, but I am more Zulu. Why is it that the jolly old barbarians of this earth are always championed by people who are their antithesis? Why is it? You are sagacious, you are benevolent, you are well informed, but, Chadd, you are not savage. Live no longer under that ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... that drawer my "Everglade" farm. Did you ever hear of the "Everglades"? I have an alligator ranch there. It is below the frost-line, also below the water-line. I will sell it ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... many places; an adaptable, cosmopolitan sort of arboreal growth. At its full strength of hard, solid, time-defying wooded body on the edge of some almost inaccessible swamp of the South, where its spread-out roots and ridgy branches earn for it another common name as the "alligator tree," it is in a park or along a private driveway at the North quite the acme of refined tree elegance, all the summer and fall. It takes on a rather narrow, pyramidal head, broadening as it ages, but never betraying kin with its fellow of the ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... too high to be conveniently dusted, a few stuffed birds, and one small alligator. 'Some of these days,' said Abner to himself, 'I am goin' to get on a step-ladder and look at them birds and things; I never did properly ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... I had a good hook an' line I'd sneak a pick'rel out o' that pond. Say, remember that time I shot that alligator-" ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... evergreen trees could we see, for the shore on either hand was completely hidden by the dense growth that hung over and touched the water. On a mud bar that we passed a huge alligator lay, taking a sun bath, and though many shots were fired at him he moved away very leisurely. No one could get on shore without first clearing a road through the thick brushes and vines along the bank. On the way one of our boatmen lost his hat, his ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... round as a hole in the ground, And weasels are wavy and sleek; And no alligator could ever be straighter Than lizards that live in a creek, But a Camel's all lumpy And bumpy and humpy— ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... Now, some time before the Princess was about to present her husband with a babe, she dreamed a dream; it was enough to terrify her, for she dreamed that, instead of a smiling infant, she should have to nurse a little green dragon. To nurse a small crocodile or alligator, or even a young hippopotamus, would have been bad enough, but a green dragon, with claws and a long wriggling fork-pointed tail, was out of the question; the very idea was enough to drive her distracted. ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... digging them; cactus leaves, the spines shaved off, cut up into tiny squares to serve as food; bundles of larger cactus spines brought in by hobbling old women or on dismal asses and sold as fuel, aguacates, known to us as "alligator pears" and tasting to the uninitiated like axle-grease; pomegranates, pecans, cheeses flat and white, every species of basket and earthen jar from two-inch size up, turnips, some cut in two for those who ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Marcia has just been here and has asked Father to let Helen go with her to Florida. Isn't that lovely? Uncle William said he wished he could take us all, but I don't believe Aunt Marcia does. Louise and I wish we could go. Aleck wants Helen to bring him an alligator. Another thing we have to tell you is that Louise went to hear Patti sing, with Mr. Caruth. He was going to take Cousin Helen, but she was sick, so he came and asked Louise if she would go instead. Aunt Marcia said it was a great compliment to such a little girl, and that she must wear her white ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... level ground near the water. I could not help recollecting the tales I had heard in my childhood from my good nurse Josefa; and I thought it more than probable that a jaguar or puma might attack us while asleep, or an alligator come out of the stream and make his supper off one of us, or that an anaconda might come crawling by and swallow the whole party at a gulp. Still, it was important that we should have a fire; and my ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... fellow came up with a gun and shot him dead. They went through and through the swamp at Musquash Hollow; but found nothing better than a wicked old snapping-turtle, evil to behold, with his snaky head and alligator tail, but worse to meddle with, if his horny jaws were near enough to spring their man-trap on the curious experimenter. At Wood-End there were some Indians, ill-conditioned savages in a dirty tent, making baskets, the miracle of which was that they were so clean. They had ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... came, I saw emerging from a dark fissure in the rock a vast and terrible head, with open jaws and dull, ghastly, hungry eyes—the head of a monstrous reptile resembling that of the crocodile or alligator, but infinitely larger than the largest creature of that kind I had ever beheld in my travels. I started to my feet and fled down the valley at my utmost speed. I stopped at last, ashamed of my panic and my flight, and returned to ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... something moved furtively out of the fireplace, and shot with a rustle into the surrounding woods. It looked like a small alligator, and was indeed an iguana, one of the few reptiles of ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... the Baniya, money-lender, grain-dealer, and monopolist, who dominates the material world as the Brahman does the spiritual. His heart, we are told, is no bigger than a coriander seed; he has the jaws of an alligator and a stomach of wax; he is less to be trusted than a tiger, a scorpion, or a snake; he goes in like a needle and comes out like a sword; as a neighbor he is as bad as a boil in the armpit. If a Baniya is on the other side of a ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... alligator tore up to Joam Garral, and after knocking him over with a sweep of his tail, ran at him ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... former declared. "And that's where old Sam kept his books." He ran his thumb-nail over the significant file-marks on the handle. "Looks like an alligator had bit it." ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... Frank went down at sunset to bathe in the river. He had just reached the bank when he heard a cry among some white soldiers bathing there, and was just in time to see one of them pulled under water by an alligator, which had seized him by the leg. Frank had so often heard what was the best thing to do that he at once threw off his Norfolk jacket, plunged into the stream, and swam to the spot where the eddy on the surface showed that a struggle was going on beneath. The ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty |
