Many of the lizard family are believed by the settlers to be venomous, but such is not the case; I believe in fact that no four-footed reptile has yet been discovered which is possessed of venom.
A remarkable power possessed by the guana, and perhaps by others of the lizard family, is its power of resisting the poison, ordinarily most destructive to animal life,—prussic acid. A middling sized guana took a small bottle of prussic acid, and seemed rather to have been exhilarated by it than otherwise; it was killed, however, by a dose of arsenic and spirits of wine.
There is a large, ugly, amphibious lizard, about three feet long, met with in Guiana, known as the Salempenta, or El Matêo, which is thought (particularly by the Indians) good eating, the flesh being white and tender. It is, however, much more ugly in appearance than the guana.
Occasionally large lizards of other kinds, two or three feet in length, are brought to the Rio market, and they are said to be excellent eating.
In the reign of Cheops, as an Egyptian gentleman curious in poultry, and famous even there for his success in producing strange birds, was walking by the river Nile, he met with an egg, which, from its appearance, he thought promised results out of the common way; so, picking it up, he took it home, and gave directions for hatching it. But some time after, on visiting his poultry yard, he found that all his pets had disappeared, a few feathers only lying scattered about, whilst a fearful animal rushed upon him open-mouthed. The fact was, he had hatched a crocodile.
Mr. Joseph, in his History of Trinidad, tells us, that he has eaten the eggs of the cayman or alligator, (without knowing what eggs they were), and found them good. In form and taste they much resemble the eggs of the domestic hen.
Dr. Buckland, the distinguished geologist, one day gave a dinner, after dissecting a Mississippi alligator, having asked a good many of the most distinguished of his classes to dine with him. His house and his establishment were in good style and taste. His guests congregated. The dinner-table looked splendid, with glass, china, and plate, and the meal commenced with excellent soup. ‘How do you like the soup?’ asked the doctor, after having finished his own plate, addressing a famous gourmand of the day. ‘Very good, indeed,’ answered the other; ‘turtle, is it not? I only ask because I do not find any green fat.’ The doctor shook his head. ‘I think it has something of a musky taste,’ said another; ‘not unpleasant, but peculiar.’ ‘All alligators have,’ replied Buckland; ‘the cayman particularly so. The fellow whom I dissected this morning——’ At this stage there was a general rout of the whole guests. Every one turned pale. Half-a-dozen started up from the table; two or three ran out of the room; and only those who had stout stomachs remained to the close of an excellent entertainment. ‘See what imagination is!’ said Buckland. ‘If I had told them it was turtle, or tarrapen, or birdsnest soup, salt-water amphibia or fresh, or the gluten of a fish, or the maw of a sea bird, they would have pronounced it excellent, and their digestion been none the worse. Such is prejudice.’ ‘But was it really an alligator?’ asked a lady. ‘As good a calf’s head as ever wore a coronet,’ answered Buckland.
The Australian crocodile is more closely allied to the gavial of India (Gavialis gangeticus), but is now often termed, like the American species, an alligator. It is large and formidable; one captured by Captain Stokes, in the Victoria River, and described in his published journal, was fifteen feet long, and some have been taken still larger than this. Like all animals of its class, the Australian crocodile is a much more formidable enemy in the water than on shore; but even in the latter position, it is by no means to be despised, for it progresses with tolerable speed; and, although it seldom or never attacks a man openly when out of its own proper element, still it is believed to have a strong liking for human flesh, when that delicacy can safely be obtained. One of these creatures paid a visit to a seaman, who was asleep in his hammock on shore after a hard day’s labour, and being unable to get conveniently at the man, it managed to drag off and carry away the blanket which covered him; the sailor at first charged his comrade with having made him the subject of a practical joke, but the foot-prints of the huge reptile, and the discovery of the abstracted blanket in the water, soon showed him the real character of his nocturnal visitant.
The flesh of the crocodile is white and delicate, resembling veal. It was a favourite dish among the Port Essington settlers, and among the seamen employed in the surveys of the northern coast and rivers of Australia. It is frequently pursued and killed for food by the aborigines of that part of the country: the plan which they adopt is to hunt it into some blind creek, when the reptile, finding itself closely pressed, and no water near, usually forces its head, and perhaps the upper part of its body in some sand-hole, fancying that it has, by so doing, concealed itself from its pursuers. In this position it is despatched with comparative ease. The crocodile makes a terrible noise by snapping its jaws, particularly when in pain, or when it is annoyed by the buzzing about its mouth and eyes of the mosquitoes or other insects, which are found in myriads among the swamps, creeks, and shallow waters, where it abides; this snapping noise is often a startling sound to explorers encamping near waters frequented by the monster.
The aboriginal tribes far to the southward of the localities in which the crocodile has its habitation, have an imperfect knowledge of the animal; stories of its voracity and fierceness have probably been recounted at the friendly meetings of the tribes, and these stories have in the same manner passed across the continent, changed and magnified with each new relation, until on reaching the coast tribes of the south, the crocodile became a nondescript animal of most terrible form, frightening the blacks and puzzling the whites under the name of the Bunyip.