When this occurs, the people, sympathising with the distress of their neighbour, awake from their habitual apathy, collect together, and destroy great numbers of these hideous reptiles.

The story I have promised you illustrates an affair of this kind.
"A _vaquero_ (cattle-herd) lived upon the Magdalena, some miles above the city of New Carthagena.

His palm-thatched _rancho_, or cottage, stood at a little distance from the bank of the river, at a point where it was much infested by caimans--as the country around was wild and thinly settled.

The vaquero had a wife and one child, a daughter--who was about six or seven years old; and being a pretty little girl, and the only one, she was of course very dear to both the parents.
"The vaquero was often absent from home--his business with his cattle carrying him to a great distance into the woods.

But his wife thought nothing of being thus left alone.