The valley of the Isabella is a grove of palms.
One cannot but remark how preposterous are the snake stories which the vulgar relate respecting the West Indies and tropics generally. The world does not contain another thing so brazenly destitute of the least common sense. In all this rambling through the woods, over the hills, and along the streams, the most harmful thing I have seen is a honey-bee—not even a dead garter-snake!
While on board a vessel off the coast one day, a sailor threw overboard a hook and line, and in the course of time caught a young shark. It was as wicked a little thing as I ever saw, and strong as a new-born giant. The sailor struck it over the head with a stick, when it snapped the hook and flounced around the vessel. In short, he killed it, and proceeded to dress it for breakfast.
“Going to eat a shark?” I inquired.
“Why not?”
“Good heavens! I thought they were the worst things in the world.”
“You eat duck,” said he; “what’s nastier than a duck? Shark’s clean—swims in a clean sea.”
I afterwards tasted a piece: it was coarse, and the idea that its mother might some day eat me, made the thing disgusting; but it learned me a lesson I shall not very soon forget. An Irishman is afraid to go to America on account of its frogs; a Frenchman makes a dish of them. One man eats rats, and another cats.
Now, to suppose there were no reptiles whatever in the country, or none peculiar to its bays and inlets, would be simply absurd; and when we get to the coast, I should be sorry to miss seeing some lazy old crocodile sunning in the sand. Should it have seven heads, however, I shall very likely catch it, and send it straight to Barnum; but if not, why, as Banks would the Union, let the snaky thing slide.
Your “Allergater in de brake” song may do for the Southern States, with their rhythmetical-and-stolen-from-the-African-coast slaves; but to apply it to this country would disgrace the most idiotic “What-is-it” ever imported. Of naturally wild quadruped animals there is not so much as a squirrel. Birds are without number.