When I had done with the carcase of the great snake it was conveyed into the forest, as I expected it would attract the king of the vultures, as soon as time should have rendered it sufficiently savoury. In a few days it sent forth that odour which a carcase should, and about twenty of the common vultures came and perched on the neighbouring trees. The king of the vultures came too; and I observed that none of the common ones inclined to begin breakfast till his majesty had finished. When he had consumed as much snake as nature informed him would do him good, he retired to the top of a high mora-tree, and then all the common vultures fell to and made a hearty meal.
When canoeing down the noble river Essequibo I had an adventure with a cayman, which we caught with a shark hook baited with the flesh of the acouri. The cayman was ten and a half feet long. He had swallowed the bait in the night and was thus fast to the end of a rope. My people pulled him up from the depths and out he came—"monstrum horrendum, informe." I saw that he was in a state of fear and perturbation. I jumped on his back, immediately seized his forelegs, and by main force twisted them on his back; thus they served for a bridle.
The cayman now seemed to have recovered from his surprise and plunged furiously, and lashed the sand with his long tail. I was out of reach of the strokes of it, by being near his head. He continued to plunge and strike, and made my seat very uncomfortable. It must have been a fine sight for an unoccupied spectator. The people roared in triumph and pulled us above forty yards on the sand. It was the first time I was ever on a cayman's back. Should it be asked how I managed to keep my seat, I would answer that I hunted for some years with Lord Darlington's foxhounds.
After some further struggling the cayman gave in. I now managed to tie up his jaws. He was finally conveyed to the canoe and then to the place where we had suspended our hammocks. There I cut his throat and after breakfast commenced the dissection.
ARTHUR YOUNG
Travels in France
I.—The First Journey, 1787
Arthur Young was born September 11, 1741, at Whitehall; died April 20, 1820. Most of his life was spent on his patrimonial estate at Bradfield Hall, near Bury St. Edmunds, England. He was the son of the Rev. Dr. Arthur Young, rector of Bradfield, Prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral, and Chaplain to Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the House of Commons. On his father's death he took to farming, but at the same time addicted himself to literature, becoming a parliamentary reporter. Arthur Young was indeed much more successful in literary pursuits than in the practice of husbandry. His book entitled "A Tour Through the Southern Counties of England" achieved great popularity. This he actively followed by writing other works describing agricultural conditions in various parts of England, and in Ireland. His vivid and interesting style secured for his treatises a very wide circulation. In 1784 he commenced the issue of an annual register entitled "The Annals of Agriculture" of which 45 volumes were published. Three years later an invitation from the Comte de la Rochefoucauld induced Young to visit France. He went a second and a third time, and created a sensation by the publication of an account of his experiences during the three consecutive years that immediately preceded the Revolution. Arthur Young travelled on horseback through many districts of France in the midst of the disturbances. So realistic is his account that it is regarded as the most reliable record ever written of the French rural conditions of that period. The French Directory ordered all Young's works to be translated into French, and they are as popular as ever to-day across the Channel.