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 wonderful river.  It is the largest, though not quite the longest, in the world.  Taking its rise among the rocky solitudes of the great mountain range of the Andes, it flows through nearly four thousand miles of the continent in an easterly direction, trending northward towards its mouth, and entering the Atlantic Ocean on the northern coast of South America, directly under the Equator.  In its course it receives the waters of nearly all the great rivers of central South America, and thousands of smaller tributaries; so that when it reaches the ocean its volume of water is enormous.  Some idea may be formed of its majestic size, from the fact that one of its tributaries—­the Rio Negro—­is fifteen hundred miles long, and varying in breadth; being a mile wide not far from its mouth, while higher up it spreads out in some places into sheets of ten miles in width.  The Madeira, another tributary, is also a river of the largest size.  The Amazon is divided into two branches at its mouth by the island of Marajo, the larger branch being ninety-six miles in width.  About two thousand miles from its mouth it is upwards of a mile wide.  So great is the force of this flood of water, that it flows into the sea unmixed for nearly two hundred miles.  The tide affects the river to a distance of about four hundred miles inland; and it is navigable from the sea for a distance of three thousand miles inland.