mud-bank.

"Och! put ashore, ye Naygur," cried Barney, seizing his pistol and
rising up in the bow of the canoe. The old man complied quickly, for
his spirit was high and easily roused.

"Look out now, Martin, an' hould back the dog for fear he wakes him up,"
said Barney, in a hoarse whisper, as he stepped ashore and hastened
stealthily towards the sleeping monster; catching up a handful of gravel
as he went, and ramming it down the barrel of his pistol. It was a
wonderful pistol that--an Irish one by birth, and absolutely incapable
of bursting, else assuredly it would have gone, as its owner said, to
"smithereens" long ago.

Barney was not a good stalker. The alligator awoke and made for the
water as fast as it could waddle. The Irishman rushed forward close up,
as it plunged into the river, and discharged the compound of lead and
stones right against the back of its head. He might as well have fired
at the boiler of a steam-engine. The entire body of an alligator--back
and belly, head and tail--is so completely covered with thick hard
scales, that shot has no effect on it; and even a bullet cannot pierce
its coat of mail, except in one or two vulnerable places. Nevertheless
the shot had been fired so close to it that the animal was stunned, and
rolled over on its back in the water. Seeing this, the old trader
rushed in up to his chin, and caught it by the tail; but at the same
moment the monster recovered, and, turning round, displayed its terrific
rows of teeth. The old man uttered a dreadful roar, and struggled to
the land as fast as he could; while the alligator, equally frightened,
no doubt, gave a magnificent flourish and splash with its tail, and
dived to the bottom of the river.

The travellers returned disgusted to their canoe, and resumed their
journey up the Amazon in silence.

The vulnerable places about an alligator are the soft parts under the
throat and the joints of the legs. This is well-known to the jaguar,
its mortal foe, which attacks it on land, and fastening on these soft
parts, soon succeeds in killing it; but should the alligator get the
jaguar into its powerful jaws or catch it in the water, it is certain to
come off the conqueror.

The Amazon, at its mouth, is more like a wide lake or arm of the sea
than a river. Mention has been already made of this noble stream in the
Hermit's Story; but it is worthy of more particular notice, for truly
the Amazon is in many respects a wond