Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1888-06-02

COON we suddenly heard here, there. beyond
and again, as if all about US, heavy splashes
into the water, and the quick parting and
subsequent trembling of countless swarths of
reeds showed where unWieldy objects had
made startled passages. We were among a
school of alligators. How many! "Wel1,
may be several thousand within square
miller answered the don conplacently. Jose
had tremendous guabrahaca dumped stick
as large, almost as heavy and quite as strong
as a crowbar in his hand. At word from
Don Manuel he glided forward and flung
himself in a reclining posture on firm bit
Of ground perhaps fifty feet from the edge of
the lagoon, while the don and myself hid in
the edge of the jungle. An almost unendur-
able silence of perhaps half an hour ensued.
Then gentle splashings among the reeds were
heard. These were shortly followed by many
soft, half-whistled gruntings. Directly the
heads of two alligators parted the reeds near
where Jose lay motionless. Fer time these
were also motionless as an Oriental study in
bronze. Then the bodies followed slowly
and cautiously at first, but soon with incred-
ible rapidity they moved upon Jose. I be-
ieve I was never SO apprehensive and excl
ted in my life. "Si1encsln hissed Don Man
uel. Instantly one Topped about, scampered
to the land-edge and whisked himself into
the bayou. But the other, with swapping
Cuban meat for breakfast. In another in
slant he was at Joses eide. The latter
bounded into the air like rubber ball.
Flinging his canvas hat into the alligator's
jaws, which snapped and crunched it hide
ously, the guabrahaca stick whistled through
a wide air circle and descended with a crash
into the reptiles skull. Before its first quiv-
er and sprawl Jose's machete was through its
snouldsrs foot into the solid soil beneath,
and this bull alligator, seventeen feet in
length, was dead. Three alligators were dis
patched in this remarkable way. Another ride
/ of dozen leagues brought us to an almost
impenetrable forest at the base of the Trini~
dad mountains. We passed our second night
with mountaineers who had never before seen
civilized man or even set eyes on a Cuban
city or pueblo; and on the morning of the
| third day, leaving our horses, and one Of our
dogs which had been disabled, with our
| mountaineer friends, plunged into trackless
Cuban forest.
Contrary to my expectation, the deep-wood
soil is barren of low vegetation. I can per-
haps best describe it as almost counterpart
of the shadowy coverts of Maine pine woods
The earth is bare, brown black, soft and still
as a carpet of velvet And the silences have
deeper and intenser selemnity. You never
see the sky. At long intervals away up there
hundred feet or more may be discovered a
sheen like a delicate mist of saffron but this
never pierces the wondrous foliage. In time
ones eyes become accustomed to the weird
cleaning, and the senses painfully acute to
every distorted sound or seeming
HUNTING THE HUTIA.
| One of our first experiences was a thrill
| ing one to me and cost the life Of one of
| our two remaining dogs. These forests
abound in the hutia, lazy animal similar
! in appearance to our gray squirrel, but
with, rabbit-like face and muskrat's tail.
They feed upon nuts, buds and tender
| twigs, and are priced for food-indeed the
/ insurgents of '68 fairly subsisted upon
them. A tremendous, stupid and fangless
snake from ten to fifteen feet in length,
called the maja, also feeds upon it, as was
demonstrated to our sorrow. Several hutias
| had been shot. Tumbling to the ground
| like a ball of lead, the dogs, which were
cross between the Newfoundland and the
Spanish mastif, would grab them and with
one whirl fling them ten feet into the air.
They were fairly wild with sport. Another
hutia had been treed. The dogs. standing
at the foot of slender mahogany, were
springing and whirling in delirious expec-
fancy. Suddenly there was a terrific COM
motion in the top Of the tree, and follow
ing this, with a frightful crash through the
leaves and limbs, huge maja, writhing
and foundering in the air, fell to the earth,
breaking the back of a dog which had
seemed unable to move in its excited fas-
cination. We dispatched both the poor
| brute and the loathesome serpent, which,
stunned by its own fall, laid limp within
1 the hole in the soft earth its own weight
had forced. It had sclimbed this mahogany
Il by ceiling, and in springing upon its VIC
| tim, the little hutia, had overleaped its
| distance.
waoD GRAFT