from our mothers and sisters and wives, for they (the Chiquitanas) have nothing to say. After all, ours are best, and a headache is often preferable to companioning with the dumb. I unhesitatingly say, give me the music, even if I have to suffer the consequences. The waiting-time was employed by our hunter in his favorite sport. One day he shot a huge alligator which was disporting itself in the water some five hundred yards from the shore. Taking a strong rope, we went out in an Indian dug-out to tow it to land. As my friend was the more dexterous in the use of the paddle, he managed the canoe, and I, with much difficulty, fixed the rope by a noose to the monster's tail. When the towing, however, commenced, the beast seemed to regain his life. He dived and struggled for freedom until the water was lashed into foam. He thrust his mighty head out of the water and opened his jaws as though warning us he could crush the frail dug-out with one snap. Being anxious to obtain his hide, and momentarily expecting his death, for he was mortally wounded, I held on to the rope with grim persistency. He dived under the boat and lifted it high, but as his ugly nose came out on the other side the canoe regained its position in the water. He then commenced to tow us, but, refusing to obey the helm, took us to all points of the compass. After an exciting cruise the alligator gave a deep dive and the rope broke, giving him his liberty again. On leaving us he gave what Waterton describes as "a long-suppressed, shuddering sigh, so loud and so peculiar that it can be heard a mile." The bullet had entered the alligator's head, but next morning we saw he was still alive and able to "paddle his own canoe." The reader may be surprised to learn that these repulsive reptiles lay an egg with a pure white shell, fair to look upon, and that the egg is no larger than a hen's. One day I was called to see a dead man for whom a kind of wake was being held. He was lying in state in a grass-built hovel, and raised up from the mud floor on two packing-cases of suspiciously British origin. His hard Indian face was softened in death, but the observant eye could trace a stoical resignation in the features. Several men and women were sitting around the corpse counting their beads and drinking native spirits, with a dim, hazy belief that that was the right thing to do. They had given up their own heathen customs, and, being civilized, must, of course, be Roman Catholics. They were "reduced," as Holy Mother Church calls it, long ago, and, of course, believe that civilization and Roman Catholicism are synonymous terms. Poor souls! How they stared and wondered when they that morning heard for the first time the story of Jesus, who tasted death for us that we might live. To those in the home lands this is an old story, but do they who preach it or listen to it realize that to millions it is still the newest thing under the sun?