"Alligator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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— Any shape ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various
... a rush like that of the Atlamalcan tugboat and an immense alligator surged up from the muddy depths, and kept pace with the craft, as though tied to it. His piggish eyes surveyed the two men as if meditating the crushing of the boat and its occupants in one terrific crunch, like the hippopotamus ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... of fine flavour is 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 ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... not wise to wade waist or knee deep in a Sunderbunds creek, and clear a boat with a yo-heave-ho, for fear of some festive mugger, which means alligator, lurking in the mud. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... smaller craft are brought to the mole of the Malecon, besides articles for exportation, a boundless variety of fruits—pine-apples (whose quality has made Guayaquil famous), oranges, lemons, limes, plantains, bananas, cocoa-nuts, alligator pears, papayas, mangos, guavas, melons, etc.; many an undescribed species of fish known only to the epicure, and barrels or jars of water from a distant point up the river, out of the reach of the tide and the city sewers. Ice is frequently brought from Chimborazo, and sold for $1 per pound. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... have to be a cold kind of pet," he replied. "And I don't like seals and walruses. The very animal that I want I can't have: the alligator ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... drove up to the station about ten minutes before the train was due. His man tied the ponies and stood holding the doctor's alligator-skin bag—very elegant, Thea thought it. Mrs. Kronborg did not burden the doctor with warnings and cautions. She said again that she hoped he could get Thea a comfortable place to stay, where they had good beds, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... jaguar, From the horrid boa-constrictor That has scared us in the pictur', From the Indians of the Pampas Who would dine upon their grampas, From every beast and vermin That to think of sets us squirmin', From every snake that tries on The traveller his p'ison, From every pest of Natur', Likewise the alligator, And from two things left behind him,— (Be sure they'll try to find him,) The tax-bill and assessor,— Heaven keep the great Professor May he find, with his apostles, That the land is full of fossils, That the waters swarm with fishes Shaped according to his wishes, That every ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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
... carrying his big stick and small net. The garden has been almost destroyed by the ALLIGATOR, who still wallows ...
— Children's Classics In Dramatic Form • Augusta Stevenson
... Jamaica, as delineated by Dallas. Agents of the "Underground Railroad" report that the incidents which daily come to their knowledge are beyond all Greek, all Roman fame. These men and women, who have tested their courage in the lonely swamp against the alligator and the bloodhound, who have starved on prairies, hidden in holds, clung to locomotives, ridden hundreds of miles cramped in boxes, head downward, equally near to death if discovered or deserted, —and who have then, after enduring all this, gone voluntarily back to risk ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... its short curved legs, just like an alligator's? And it's long. Probably its tail is tucked away inside somewhere. Alligators have long tails, you know. I saw an alligator once that ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... reach the piece of timber, Francois was seen coming up the trail between the trees, and running as if for his life! In front of him an object appeared, like a dead log, lying directly across the path. It could not be that, for it was in motion. It was a living animal—an alligator! ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... occupies a position on a shelf near by, and all southern visitors greet the Alligator as a familiar friend, as all of us joyfully meet any acquaintance ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... the State of Sao Paulo are flour, mandioca, cassava, bran, tanned hides, horns, fruit (pineapples, bananas, cocoanuts, abacates (alligator pears), oranges, tangerines, etc.), wax, timber (chiefly jacaranda or rosewood), a yearly decreasing quantity of cotton, steel and iron, mica, goldsmith's dust, dried and preserved fish, scrap sole leather, salted ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... brac had been removed from the sideboard and tables. Some of the dresser drawers were half open, and pieces of tissue paper and ribbons were hanging out. On the armchair was a small alligator bag, containing toilet articles and a bunch of keys. The writing-desk had all its contents removed, and was open, showing scraps of torn-up letters. Lying on the floor, where it had been dropped, was a New York Central timetable. Between the desk and the bay-window stood ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... You learn how the natives obtain sugar, palm-wine, and rubber; what is the use of the toucan's huge beak, and how plants secure the fertilisation of their flowers. You watch the tricks of the monkey, the humming-bird's courtship, the lying in wait of the alligator, and all the ceaseless activity of the forest—that forest so monotonous in its general features, but fascinating beyond measure when the varied life-histories working out within it are realised—and you share in the keen joy of the naturalist who has written with such simple ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... of creatures, she's the daintiest of misses, With her pretty patent leathers or her alligator ties, With her eyes inviting glances and her lips inviting kisses, As she wanders by the ocean or strolls under ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Douay, and others, the trustiest of his followers. On the twenty-fifth, they set sail; the "Joly" and the little frigate "Belle" following. They coasted the shore of Cuba, and landed at the Isle of Pines, where La Salle shot an alligator, which the soldiers ate; and the hunters brought in a wild pig, half of which he sent to Beaujeu. Then they advanced to Cape St. Antoine, where bad weather and contrary winds long detained them. A load of cares oppressed the mind of La Salle, pale and haggard with recent illness, wrapped within ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... effects of corroborees are sometimes huge sheets of bark fastened on to poles; these sheets of bark are painted in different designs and colours, something like Moorish embroideries. Sometimes there is a huge imitation of an alligator made of logs plastered over with earth and painted in stripes of different colours, a piece of wood cut open stuck in at one end as a gaping mouth. This alligator corroboree is generally indicative of a Boorah, or initiation ceremony, being near ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... fumbling at the hasps of his alligator bag which stood by, opening it out and stooping ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... window, the moon was at the full. She was standing by the gate, her head inside the garden; I took it her anxiety was lest we might miss any of it. Her neck was stretched out straight, her eyes towards the sky; which gave to her the appearance of a long-eared alligator. I have never had much to do with cows. I don't know how you talk to them. I told her to "be quiet," and to "lie down"; and made pretence to throw a boot at her. It seemed to cheer her, having an audience; she added half a dozen extra notes. I never knew before a cow had so much in her. There ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... table on the left side of the room in front of the rows of chairs. On it Mavis Greenfield had placed a number of enigmatic articles, some of which would be employed as props in one manner or another during the evening's work. The most prominent item was a small suitcase in red alligator hide. Dr. Ormond, however, passed up the suitcase, took a small flat wooden plate from the table and returned to the center ...
— Ham Sandwich • James H. Schmitz
... court jester and reductio ad absurdum. When he leaps into public notice with some new pearl of knowledge, it commonly turns out to be no more than the news that Marie Bashkirtseff, the Russian lady walrus, has had her teeth plugged with zinc and is expecting twins. Or that Pishposh, the man-eating alligator, is down with locomotor ataxia. Or that Damon, the grizzly, has just finished his brother Pythias in the tenth round, chewing off his tail, ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... out 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 ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... splendor of the swamp, With pomp of scarlet and of purple bloom, Where blow warm, furtive breezes faint and damp, Strange insects whir, and stalking bitterns boom— Where from stale waters dead Oft looms the great-jawed alligator's head. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... Within ten years the alligator has become an important factor to the artistic manufacturer. The hide, by a new process, is tanned to an agreeable softness and used in innumerable ways. The most costly bags and trunks are made from it; pocket-books, card-cases, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... I passed a huge dead alligator, lying half in and half out of the muddy slime of the river bank—a most hideous object it was, and I was glad to turn my eyes to the beautiful surface of the mid stream, all burnished with sunset glories, and broken with the vivacious gambols of a school of porpoises. It ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... his rescue, were stifled with the embraces of their former partners, and their utilitarianism dissolved in the arms of those they once so rudely rejected. As for their tutor, he was thrust into one of the canoes, with some fresh water, bread-fruit, dried fish, and a basket of alligator-pears. A band of mermaids carried the canoe with exquisite management through the shallows and over the breakers, and poor Popanilla in a few minutes found himself out at sea. Tremendously frightened, he offered to recant all his opinions, and denounce as traitors any ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... be too late," declared Mr. Alcando. "The alligator will have him before you reach him. Oh, that I was a good swimmer, or that ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... "An alligator!" exclaimed the Major; "well, I had no idea that there were any here inland. They said that there were plenty at the mouths of the rivers, on the coast of the Eastern Caffres, but I am astonished ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... a girl of fifteen or sixteen, were very anxious to know what he had seen and what the remains of the most-talked-of man in the Europe of his day looked like. "What did he look like, my dear? He looked like an alligator," said the Admiral, who did not mince his words. It is strange that men should prefer to put their kin in what, in the naval records after Trafalgar, is called "a pickle" rather than give them a burial at sea or in "some corner of a foreign field"! But on such matters there ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... giddiness, and between whiles he speculated hazily as to the size of the blister the sun was raising on his back. For amusement he tried by looking ahead to decide whether the muddy object he saw lying on the water's edge was a log of wood or an alligator. Only very soon he had to give that up. No fun in it. Always alligator. One of them flopped into the river and all but capsized the canoe. But this excitement was over directly. Then in a long empty reach he was very grateful to a troop of monkeys who came right down on the bank and made ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... 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 ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... intention rather than accident. These are sometimes called "Effigy Mounds." In Wisconsin, even implements, as well as animals, are symbolized. The beaver, the tortoise, the elephant, the serpent, the alligator seem to be their favorite animals, whose images they have endeavored to perpetuate in mounds, of course on a large scale. In Adams county, Ohio, on a steep bluff, 150 feet above the level of Brush Creek, may ...
— Mound-Builders • William J. Smyth
... "gliding merrily down the Ohio" in a keel-boat, "navigated by eight or ten of those half-horse and half-alligator gentry commonly called Ohio boatmen," Judge Hall was lulled to sweet sleep, as the rowers were "tugging at the oar," timing their strokes to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... a qui l bel mango?" Her basket of mangoes certainly weighs as much as herself.... "a qui l bel avocat?," The alligator-pear—cuts and tastes like beautiful green cheese... "a qui l escargot?" Call her, if you like snails.... "Ca qui l titiri?" Minuscule fish, of which a thousand would scarcely fill a tea-cup;—one of the most delicate of Martinique ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... embellishments of a modern European boudoir than those of this apartment, which had, in some degree, been made the sanctum of its present occupants. Here was to be seen the scaly carcass of some huge serpent, extending its now harmless length from the ceiling to the floor—there an alligator, stuffed after the same fashion; and in various directions the skins of the beaver, the marten, the otter, and an infinitude of others of that genus, filled up spaces that were left unsupplied by the more ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... burst. 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 also that any attempt to count the distinguishing ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... valise. It was craftily disposed in the mouth of the half-open bag, which seemed crammed to the hinges with it, making an alluring bait. The long, black revolver of Shanklin's other days and nights lay there beside the bag asserting its large-caliber office of protection with a drowsy alligator look about it. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... frankly confess I was afraid to trust myself" but at length, yielding to his importunities, he went home with his oppressed brother, intending to spend the night with him. His visit roused the fury of the wife, and "I saw in a minute," says our preacher, "that the devil was in her as big as an alligator, and I determined on my course." The woman held her tongue until after supper, when her husband asked her kindly to join them in prayers. She flew into a rage, and swore there should be no praying in her house that night. Cartwright tried to reason with her, but she cursed him roundly. ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... handle into the water, but a look of surprise was painted on his face. In silence he looked toward the neighboring mountain and continued moving the handle of the net from one side to the other. Finally, without taking the net out of the water, he murmured in a low voice: "An alligator." ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... dangerous to man, I omitted the alligator, which infests every river and muddy creek in Java, and grows to a very large size. At the mouth of the Batavia river, they are very numerous and dangerous, particularly to Europeans. It strikes one as ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... with reeds and papyrus fifteen feet high, become the lake itself. Frequently, too, the villages on its shores are half submerged, as was the case with Ngornou in 1856, and now the hippopotamus and the alligator frisk and dive where the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... 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 of ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... have 'conditions' to 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
... 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 ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... by no means the strangest animal which has made its home on board a man-of-war. In a small gunboat in China some years ago the ship's company acquired a so-called tame alligator. Algernon, as they christened him, came on board as a youngster a few weeks old and about four feet long, and soon developed a habit of appearing when the decks were being scrubbed in the mornings, when he revelled ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... his friends, M. Larsoneur, advocate, member of the bar at Lisieux, and archaeologist, would probably supply them with information about it. He had written a history of Port-en-Bessin, in which the discovery of an alligator was noticed. ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... harbors: Alligator Pond, Discovery Bay, Kingston, Montego Bay, Ocho Rios, Port Antonio, Rocky ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... 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 as celebrated for virtue and piety as his ancestors and ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... had never seen a Scotsman before. And he looked me all over, his good, honest, brawny countenance shining with interest, as a boy might look upon a lion or an alligator. From him I learned with disgust that I could not be received at Our Lady of the Snows; I might get a meal, perhaps, but that was all. And then, as our talk ran on, and it turned out that I was not a pedlar, but a literary ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... many instances which show various stages in the same progressive development towards greater care for the safety and education of the young. Among the larger lizards, for example, a distinct advance may be traced between the comparatively uncivilized American alligator and his near ally, the much more cultivated African crocodile. On the banks of the Mississippi, the alligator lays a hundred eggs or thereabouts, which she deposits in a nest near the water's edge, and then covers them up with leaves and other decaying vegetable matter. The fermentation ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... size to which these extinct reptiles must have grown. One, the Iguanodon (case 3) was an animal that measured seventy feet in length. It existed in this country; various bones of it are in this case. The remains of the fossil Alligator, known as the mosasaurus, are also here, together with the wealden lizard of Kent, which was about twenty-five feet in length, and part of Cuvier's wonderful fossil Flying Lizard, or sterodactylus, which is described as a reptile having mammalian characteristics, ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... 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
... forests, I travelled twenty-three times through various parts of the vast northern woods, between Maine and Alaska, and covered thousands upon thousands of miles by canoe, pack-train, snowshoes, bateau, dog-train, buck-board, timber-raft, prairie-schooner, lumber-wagon, and "alligator." No one trip ever satisfied me, or afforded me the knowledge or the experience I sought, for traversing a single section of the forest was not unlike making one's way along a single street of a metropolis and then trying to persuade oneself that one ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... 'We have broad belts of alligator skin, pouches, pistols, bowie-knives, and tan-coloured shoes; but we dislike to flaunt them before the eyes ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was that "the black man has no rights the white man is bound to respect;" or, as Stephen A. Douglas defined his position before an applauding audience, "I am for the white man as against the black man, and for the black man against the alligator." Recent lynching and shotgun experiences, too fresh in memory to call for reminder, and too painful in detail to describe, give us at least reason to pause before we leave our own hearthstone to seek new and distant fields for missionary labors. It remains to consider the ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... 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
... PERSEA GRATISSIMA.—The avocado or alligator pear, a common tree in the West Indies. The fruits are pear-shaped, covered with a brownish-green or purple skin. They are highly esteemed where grown, but strangers do not relish them. They contain a large quantity of firm pulp, possessing a buttery or marrow-like taste, and are frequently called ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... on old McSpinosa's plantation was chopping down banana stalks and loading the bunches of fruit on the backs of horses. Then a native dressed up in an alligator hide belt, a machete, and a pair of AA sheeting pajamas, drives 'em over to the coast and piles 'em up on ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... that, though 'tis, almost," said Mrs. Watson. "There isn't an elephant, but there is an alligator." ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... two small heads of lettuce; four medium sized tomatoes; one alligator pear. Place lettuce leaves on plate with two or three slices of tomatoes. Cover with rings of alligator pear cut very thin. ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... audience came with the expectation of hearing the rhetorical fire-works of a Western stump-speaker of the "half-horse, half-alligator" variety, they met novelty of an unlooked for kind. In Lincoln's entire address he neither introduced an anecdote nor essayed a witticism; and the first half of it does not contain even an illustrative figure or a poetical fancy. It was the quiet, searching exposition of the historian, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... demoiselle," announced Mephisto to the woman who met them. She was small and wizened and old, with yellow, flabby jaws, a neck like the throat of an alligator, and straight, white hair that stood from ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... efficaciously, as to beat them off: he then hastened towards the shore, as the only means of preservation left. Here the water was shallow; and his ferocious opponents, some of which were twelve feet in length, returned into deeper water. After this, as Mr. Bartram was stepping out of his canoe, an alligator rushed up to him, near his feet, and, with its head and shoulders out of the water, lay there for some time. Mr. Bartram ran for his gun, and, having a heavy charge in it, he shot the animal in the head and killed him. While Mr. Bartram was employed in cleansing some fish for his ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... destroyed it.... 'The whole world', said Ah-uuc-chek-nale (he who seven times makes fruitful), 'proceeded from the seven bosoms of the earth.' And he descended to make fruitful Itzam-kab-uin (the female whale with alligator-feet), when he came down from the central angle of the heavenly ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... 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. Tools, instruments, ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... Fitzroy River. Excursion into the interior. Alarm of the Natives. Ascent of the River. Sufferings from Mosquitoes. Red Sandstone. Natives again surprised. Appearance of the Country. Impediments in the River. Return of the boats. An Alligator. Stokes' Bay. Narrow escape of an Officer. Change of Landscape. Pheasant-Cuckoos. A new Vine. Compass Hill. Port Usborne. Explore the eastern shore of King's Sound. Cone Bay. Native Fires. Whirlpool Channel. Group of Islands. Sterile aspect of the Coast. Visited by a Native. Bathurst Island. Native ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... a little better after that, for he did the thing with great skill. When I had got so far, nothing could surprise me, and I didn't turn a hair when I found that I was expected to eat pears cut up with salad oil. But they were alligator pears, and when you tasted them, it appeared that they had nothing whatever to do with the fruit kingdom. Best of all, I liked the watermelon which came at the end, cut in little balls, looking like strawberry water ice, and soaked in champagne. I hope that all the things to eat in America won't ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... met another man who had been at Cibola, and who also told him of a great river in which there were crocodiles. This was the Mississippi, of course, and the crocodiles were alligators. As Alarcon had never seen an alligator he took the description to mean crocodile. A little farther and he heard of the negro Estevan again and the reason why the Cibolans had killed him, which was to prevent the Spaniards, whom he described, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... DOWN IN DIXIE; or, The Strange Secret of Alligator Swamp. Startling experiences awaited the comrades when they visited the Southland. But their knowledge of woodcraft enabled them to overcome ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... tongue not to be easily translated; in fact, perfectly proof against all prying outsiders. The one way to hoodwink old Fraser is to humbug him about the great work on Thibet. That is the one soft spot in the hide of this old alligator. We have gone carefully over the reports of your secret agent at St. Heliers. Make us square with him, Captain, let him have your orders to aid us, and he can get us first hooked on to this Yankee Professor Alaric Hobbs! We will jolly him a bit, and so, get an interview with old Fraser, and ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... Lucian's) 'my hearers' incredulity'—that in a paper set upon three Acts of "Hamlet"—three Acts of "Hamlet"!—the first question started with 'G.tt. p..cha' 'Al..g.tor' and invited the candidate to fill in the missing letters correctly. Now I was morally certain that the words 'gutta-percha' and 'alligator' did not occur in the first three Acts of "Hamlet"; but having carefully re-read them I invited this examining body to explain itself. The answer I got was that, to understand Shakespeare, a student must ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... They were grouped about four lunch baskets. One of the children, a little boy, held a black greyhound by a rope around its neck. Trina wore a blue cloth skirt, a striped shirt waist, and a white sailor; about her round waist was a belt of imitation alligator skin. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... I do mean. He ran young Alec Simpson of the Courier a mile down the high road last week by the collar of his coat and the slack of his breeches. You'll have read of it, likely, in the police report. Our boys would as soon interview a loose alligator in the zoo. But you could do it, I'm thinking—an ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and green doorways of the gay little shops, or sauntered past them; easily distinguished by their clothing and their air of unaccustomed and dissatisfied languor. One could pick out at a glance the new-comers just up from Florida; they were so decorated with alligator-tooth jewelry, and gazed so contemptuously at the oranges and bananas in the windows. The native Southerners were equally conspicuous, in the case of the men, from their careless dress and placid demeanor. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... thy friends, And wisely tell them thy imprudence 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
... mississippiensis 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 alligator, has the widest distribution, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Turtles, Lizards and Snakes. It is commonly said that reptiles are cold-blooded. This means that the temperature of their blood varies and is the same as the surrounding medium. The temperature of an Alligator that has been floating with its nose out of the water is the same as the surrounding water. The temperature of a turtle in the winter time is the same as the mud in which it is buried, while in the summer time it is much higher. What is true of the reptiles in respect to temperature is ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... about Dunsany 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 Brewster place was honeycombed with sleeping ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... and the Casuarina remained at Kupang till June 3—twenty-eight days—enjoying the hospitality of the Dutch. Peron made several excursions for collecting purposes, and once shot an alligator nine feet long, which he skinned. He had the hide and head carried down to the port by Malays on long bamboo poles, this method of conveyance being necessitated by the superstitious refusal of the natives to touch even the skin of the dreaded beast. But the labour was to a large extent ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... said Dick, mildly; "for 't is not the topic of conversation I should choose myself, just at present. And as for that black-whiskered alligator, the baron, let me first get out of those rambustious, unchristian, filbert-shaped claws of his, and then—but jump in! jump in! and tell ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ever been offered to a Spanish conqueror, even by Moors, to say nothing of Indians. There were two collars of gold set with precious stones; a hundred ounces of gold ore just as it came from the mines; a large alligator's-head of gold; six shields covered with gold; helmets and necklaces of gold. There were birds made of green feathers, the feet, beaks and eyes of gold; a box of feather-work upon leather, set with a gold plate weighing seventy ounces; pieces ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... into view. She had taken refuge in the cabin of Araujo, and the cabin had just been upset by a powerful blow from the third alligator. Minha was flying aft, pursued by the monster, who was not six feet away ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... attain a length of six 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 ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... skillful man with horses, and had never liked an automobile half as much. He loved all animals and they seemed to love him too. At the present time his pets consisted of a small woolly dog, an angora cat, a parrot, and an alligator. The last named pet he kept in an old wash tub, half full of water, and called him Percy. He used to talk to all his pets as if they were human beings, Percy included, and many people had ventured the opinion that his brain was not quite as good ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... been badly bitten by one. Those that we caught sometimes bit through the hooks, or the double strands of copper wire that served as leaders, and got away. Those that we hauled on deck lived for many minutes. Most predatory fish are long and slim, like the alligator-gar and pickerel. But the piranha is a short, deep-bodied fish, with a blunt face and a heavily undershot or projecting lower jaw which gapes widely. The razor-edged teeth are wedge-shaped like a shark's, and the jaw muscles possess great ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... going to divide it between us. Aunt 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
... irritating goose!" she said aloud. "There never was such a lovable idiot before. He's just like the alligator in the old rhyme, who wouldn't go along, and wouldn't keep still, but just kept bobbing up ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... at noon, was something of an epicure at night; she liked a comfortable quantity, and that of many varieties, and these of the best. Under the ministrations of Matilda she pleasurably disposed of clear soup, whitebait, a pair of squabs on toast with asparagus tips, and an alligator pear salad. ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... little shops,—so full of delightful, unnecessary things, candy and glace fruits, and orchids and exquisite Chinese embroideries, and postal cards, and theater tickets, and oranges, and paper-covered novels, and alligator pears! The very sight of these things aroused in her heart a longing that was as keen as pain. Oh, to push her way, somehow, into the world, to have a right to enjoy these things, to be a part of this brilliant, moving show, to play her part in ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... almost black by the sun and with the skin of his face as wrinkled as an alligator's hide, rose from a comfortable chair on the porch to greet them. He wore a long white goatee and military mustache. He had an air of ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... boat down the shallow river, Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the buck turns furiously at the hunter, Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the otter is feeding on fish, Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou, Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tall; Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower'd cotton plant, over the rice in its low moist field, Over the sharp-peak'd farm house, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... in that underwater causeway, and the edges of each turn were slippery slopes, up which an alligator certainly could climb, but that afforded not the least chance to a man whose foot once stepped too far and slid. And not only were there unexpected turns at different intervals, but there were gaps in the causeway ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... and put on her hat to go out for something forgotten until now. As she stepped into the hall, a tall young man, with extremely long arms and legs, and mouth, that, although shaded by a faint outline of a mustache, invariably suggested an alligator, opened the door of Mrs. Simonson's rooms, opposite, and seeing Nattie, started back in a sort of nervous bashfulness. Recovering himself, he then darted out with such impetuosity that his foot caught in a rug, he fell, and went headlong ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... skins adorned with different kinds of feathers, and he had on his head a very large and high head-piece, in the form of a grenadier's cap, with prickles like a porcupine; and he made a certain noise which resembled the cry of an alligator. Our people skipped amongst them out of complaisance, though some could not drink of their tourrie; but our rum met with customers enough, and was soon gone. The alligators were killed and some of them roasted. Their ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... horsemen, all dressed in hunting shirts over buckskin breeches and jackets, and armed with rifles and bowie-knives; stout, daring looking fellows, evidently from the south-western states, with the true Kentucky half horse half alligator profile, and the usual allowance of thunder, lightning, and earthquake. It struck me when I saw them, that two or three thousand such men would have small difficulty in dealing with a whole army of Mexicans, if the latter were all of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... age ran the Hindu prophecy that Bhartpur should never fall till there came a great alligator against it; and when it fell to the English assault, the Brahmans found that the name of the leader was Combermere Kumhir-Mir, the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... 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 little more than ten years since the first was detected,—are ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... it was going on night, and the wolves howled in hearing, and I begun to feel dubious. Uncle Waldron heard me chopping, and come, and took me home to his little hemlock hut. Remember it, Uncle Mose? I slep on the softest corner of your black muck-floor, and you said I snored like an alligator." ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... previous paper (6) the writer described the general features in the development of the American Alligator; and in other papers special features were taken up in ...
— Development of the Digestive Canal of the American Alligator • Albert M. Reese
... been an alligator, fellows. Some of the natives told me there are a few in this old stream," ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... if he knew that Bibsy had grown another head during the night, and he almost cried when he found I was April-fooling him. He said he had always wanted a two-headed cat. Then when I asked him if he had seen the alligator under the dining room table, he wouldn't look. He just said, 'What's a nalligator?' I told him it was like Mummy's handbag only much, much bigger, and he wants to see a real one. Mummy says we must take him to the zoo someday ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... and identified in the streets and private grounds of Key West were jasmine, bergamot, poinsettia, hibiscus, almond, banana, sapodilla, tamarind, Jamaica apple, mango, Spanish lime, cotton-tree, royal poinciana, "Geiger flower" (a local name), alligator-pear, tree-cactus, sand-box, cork-tree, banian-tree, sea-grape, cocoanut-palm, date-palm, Indian laurel, Australian pine, and wild fig. Most of these trees and shrubs do not grow even in southern Florida, and are to be found, within the limits of the United States, only ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... 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, though ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... had an air of being invincible, and Man seemed at best an infrequent precarious intruder. One travelled for miles, amidst the still, silent struggle of giant trees, of strangulating creepers, of assertive flowers, everywhere the alligator, the turtle, and endless varieties of birds and insects seemed at home, dwelt irreplaceably—but man, man at most held a footing upon resentful clearings, fought weeds, fought beasts and insects for the barest foothold, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... 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 amounted to about 500 men, a portion ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... as Mr. Cannon came into the room. The 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 and large overcoat (which Dayson called an 'immensikoff.') She thought the ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Snick's a fancy dresser, no matter who he owes for it. He'll quit eatin' any time, or do the camel act, or even give up his cigarettes; but if the gents' furnishing shops are showin' something new in the line of violet socks or alligator skin vests, Snick's got to sport the first ones ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... books have been bound in enamel, (richly variegated in color) in Persian silk, in seal-skin, in the skin of the rabbit, white-bear, crocodile, cat, dog, mole, tiger, otter, buffalo, wolf, and even rattle-snake. A favorite modern leather for purses and satchels, alligator-skin, has been also applied to the clothing of books. Many eccentric fancies have been exemplified in book-binding, but the acme of gruesome oddity has been reached by binding books in human skin, of which many examples ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... should have known him But for the colored folk That here obtain And ne'er in vain That wizard's art invoke; For when the Eye that's Evil Would him and his'n damn, The negro's grief gets quick relief Of Hoodoo-Doctor Sam. With the caul of an alligator, The plume of an unborn loon, And the poison wrung From a serpent's tongue By the light ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... nor more welcome than he does now, God bless the long-armed, long-legged, fightin', gen'rous, kind-hearted cuss! An' thar's Paul, too, lookin' fur all the world like a scholar, crammed full o' book l'arnin', 'stead o' the ring-tailed forest runner, half hoss, half alligator, that he is, though he's got the book l'arnin' an' is one o' the greatest scholars the world ever seed! An' that's Tom Ross, with his mouth openin' ez ef he wuz 'bout to speak a word, though he'll conclude, ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... quote Laing again, "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 ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... grandson, who, he says, is all Hastings, with a very little Tracy and not a grain of German in him, 'but very nice, very nice; and you are his grandmother, too, and I am his grandfather, whom he once called an old crazy man because I wouldn't let him play in my room with a little alligator which his Aunt Dolly sent him ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... scale somewhat proportioned to our geographical pretensions. Our 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, it muffled itself from criticism in the loose ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... It was like an alligator pear—and his complexion was like those cactus fruits that likewise infest fancy grocers' shops. A visitor from the South Sea Islands? No, he wasn't that sort. He was a Fossil. Vikings were in his face, and Beef Eaters ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... 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 to ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... out and are expecting from their parents the food which the chances of the hunt may delay, they do not cease chirping and calling by their cries. But the parents are not alone in hearing these appeals. They may also strike the ears of the alligator, who furtively approaches the imprudent singers. With a sudden stroke of his tail he strikes the reeds and throws into the water one or more of the hungry young ones, who are then at his ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... a full supply of fish, some of which were cooked on the spot, brother Ed., in wandering about, captured a young alligator, and led it along to where sister Lu was seated, saying: "I've brought you a new pet, Lu." She adopted the little monster at once, and it was carried home, and turned loose in the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... leather of 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
... 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... entirely on his own quickness and dexterity. Birdlime is a device for which many plants furnish material,[166] and which is available even against large game, which is fretted and worn out by it until it becomes the prey of man. A Botocudo hunter grates the eggs of an alligator together, when he finds them on the bank, and so entices the mother.[167] The Yuroks of California sprinkled berries on the shallow bottom of a river and stretched a net a few inches below the surface of the water. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... 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 ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... look very hopeful, Louis, if the Fatime were only doing her best to overhaul us in a chase; but she is like an alligator sunning himself on the water, she don't move a muscle," said ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... recently returned to England after a year's wanderings in the southern hemisphere, and had arrived at the moat-house on the previous day, bringing with him a dried alligator's head with gaping jaws, a collection of rare stuffed birds and snakeskins for Phil, who had a taste in that direction, and a carved tiki god for Miss Heredith. He had also brought with him his Chinese servant, two kea parrots, and a mat of white ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... 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
... abrupt turn I surprised two little naked children, fat as butterballs, dabbling in a mud puddle close to the stream. The sight, coupled with the tropical-like heat and the jungle, could well make one imagine he was in Africa or India, and that the little brown bodies were the "alligator bait" of which we read. Only the 'gators were missing. The unexpected sight of a boat and a white man trying to photograph them started them both into a frightened squall. Then an indignant mother appeared, ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... an' the question was, 'Who was Columbus?' an' the answer was, 'He was the son of er extinguished alligator,' an' Miss Carrie laughed, ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... 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 ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... 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, and they had both disappeared. ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... people as we were the day before —sick ones at any rate. But the world is slow, and people will go to "water cures" and "movement cures" and to foreign lands for health. Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator. I do not mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher ones. The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be?—it is the same the angels breathe. I think that hardly any amount of fatigue can be gathered together ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the rowers of Ulysses, M. Salverte, a recent compiler on the marvellous, is tempted to regard as an overgrown polypus magnified by the optical power of poetry, though we are disposed to give the credit to an alligator, or its mate, a crocodile; and this occurrence is not so fictitiously represented, as it ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... no mistake. This ain't you. You're the whitest boss that ever looked down my shirt collar. That's so. That's what the boys all say. Just you pull out from the company and go with us. We'll carry you right up to glory on the back of a fire-snorting alligator." ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... half devil—a third half being provided for their particular convenience. It is for similar reasons, and probably with equal truth, that the backwoodsmen of Kentucky are styled half man, half horse, and half alligator by the settlers on the Mississippi, and held accordingly in great ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... 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 notice of us. I therefore took a double-barrelled ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... deceit; but all the 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 on the leopard and tiger, and in the berries of the ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Ingolby. He's done. He's a back 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. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in wonder. As if an alligator had rights! What a strange, interesting boy. The idea of understanding an alligator. She was about to ask how understanding the creature would keep one from being eaten up when Michael ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... not'ing wid me, Massa Ossifer, and I must tooken my chance to go up in de boat. Better hab my froat cut 'n be chawed up by a big alligator. Was you ever bit by ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... 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 ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... right!" the 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
... occasionally came across negros, of whom we cautiously inquired as to the route and towns, and by the assistance of our map and the stars, got along very well indeed, until we came to the Suwanee River. We had intended to cross this at Columbus or Alligator. When within six miles of the river we stopped at some negro huts to get some food. The lady who owned the negros was a widow, who was born and raised in Massachusetts. Her husband had died before the war began. An old negro woman ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... out against the Indian mother that throws her child into the Ganges, to be devoured by the alligator or crocodile, but that is joy in comparison with the Christian mother's hope, that she may be in salvation while her brave boy is ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... fish aspec, a—Why rhapsodise? Let it be sufficient if I say that in discussing the Aladdin-like feast I secretly and faithfully promised my chef a material increase in wages. I had never suspected him of being such a genius, nor myself of being such a Pantegruelian disciple. I must mention the alligator pear salad. For three weeks I had been trying to buy alligator pears in the town hard by. These came from Paris. The chef had spoken to me about them that morning, asking me when I had ordered them. Inasmuch as I had not ordered them at all, I couldn't satisfy ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... pony; which will be led 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
... description of this creature seems to indicate an alligator or crocodile; which probably Marco had not seen, and only describes from an imperfect account ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... trouble while 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
... river banks. At times the ship went so close that I could reach out and grab a limb of a tree, much to the indignation of the monkeys who chattered at me as if I had stolen something. Now and then a big lazy alligator slid into the water from the muddy banks as the wave-wash from our propeller ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... in a boat, gathering driftwood, saw a sleeping Alligator, and, thinking it was a log, fell to estimating the number of shingles it would make for his new cabin. Having satisfied his mind on that point, he stuck his boat-hook into the beast's back to harvest his good fortune. Thereupon the saurian emerged from his dream ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... musk-ox, the antelope, the goat, and the dog, with many more, such as the beaver, the otter, the mink, and the musk-rat, which lay with their tails in the pond and their heads in the pen; and others, such as the tortoise and the alligator, whose snouts preferred water, while their tails stuck to the land. In the coop were a vast many birds and fowls, some of beautiful and varied plumage, while others were robed in dirty and dingy feathers; some were very tender, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... crabbed, or getting fishy, or even mermaiding in this room, Grace," teased Cleo. "It is so effective I should rather fear the effect taking root. Just look at this real little alligator and he is actually strong enough to sit on! Did you ever see anything so cunning?" The real little alligator or crocodile was actually standing on his short hind legs, and in his front (shall we say paws?) he was holding a flat piece of wood that served for the seat of the queer stool. It was all ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... heartily, danced, sang hymns, and enjoyed life. For them it was a picnic. But soon their hosts began to wear long faces; the strangers had enormous appetites, and the plantains and the bread-fruit vanished before their rapacity; the alligator-pear trees, whose fruit sent to Apia might sell for good money, were stripped bare. Ruin stared them in the face. And then they found that the strangers were working very slowly. Had they received a hint from Walker that they might take their ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... all the time—and there's somep'n the trouble with grandpa: it makes him sick to smell violets: he had it ever since he was a little boy, and he can't help it; and he hates animals, and they keep sendin' her Airedales and Persian kittens, and then there was that alligator came from Florida and upset Kitty Silver terribly—and so, you see, grandpa just hates ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... spots, and in the shallower water different kinds of sponges. Out on the reef the water is a light green. The Gulf Stream runs along the outer edge of the reef, and here between Tennessee Buoy and Alligator Light, eighteen miles, is a feeding-ground for sailfish, kingfish, amberjack, barracuda, and other fishes. The ballyhoo is the main feed of these fishes, and it is indeed a queer little fish. He was made by nature, ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... afraid to trust myself. I pitied the poor little man so much that finally I yielded, and went home with him one evening. When we arrived I saw she was mad, and the devil was in her as big as an alligator. So I determined on my course. After supper her husband said very kindly: 'Come, wife, stop your little affairs, and let us have prayers.' To this she replied: 'I will have none of your praying about me.' Speaking mildly, I expostulated ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... exposed to observation; and, this tenement being furnished with the apparatus of a magician, such as globes, telescopes, a magic-lanthorn, a skeleton, a dried monkey together with the skins of an alligator, otter, and snake, the conjurer himself took possession of his castle, after having distributed printed advertisements containing ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... 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 ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... 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, ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... her mother in the elevator; there was a more public caress; and the captain in the Chinese dining-room placed Linda at a small table against the wall. There she had clams—she adored iced clams—creamed shrimps and oysters with potatoes bordure, alligator-pear salad and a beautiful charlotte cream with black walnuts. After this she sedately instructed the captain what to sign on the back of the dinner check—Linda Condon, room five hundred and seven—placed ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and more fearsome reptiles, which occasionally rose from the deep to do battle with them, were azdyryths, or sea-dyryths—Perry called them Ichthyosaurs. They resembled a whale with the head of an alligator. ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... edges of the limbs. The tail is shortened and bifurcate. The most interesting portion, however, is the head. The snout is distinctly pinched in at the base, though broadened again distally. In the alligator the snout is broad and tapers but little. As in other representations of the crocodile, the lower jaw does not appear, and even in this dorsal view the artist seems to have deemed it necessary to show the row of teeth as if in side view, or as though ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... of cats, the grunts and squeals of hogs. In the black river, flowing past within a stone's throw of the hotel door, sounded the loud snorts of dolphins and the hideous night call of the foul beast of the mud—the alligator. Out from the matted tangle of trees and brush and great snakelike vines behind the town rolled the appalling roars of guaribas, raucous bird calls, dismal hoots, sudden scattered screams. And over all, whelming all other sound by the sheer might of its penetrating ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... man chiefly responsible for the slaughter of the birds at Alligator Bay. He laughed at the idea of getting plumes without killing the birds! I well know the man who shot the birds up Rogers River, and even saw some of the empty shells left on the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday |
