Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Alligator   /ˈæləgˌeɪtər/   Listen
Alligator

verb
1.
Crack and acquire the appearance of alligator hide, as from weathering or improper application; of paint and varnishes.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Alligator" Quotes from Famous Books



... two small heads of lettuce; four medium sized tomatoes; one alligator pear. Place lettuce leaves on plate with two or three slices of tomatoes. Cover with rings of alligator pear cut very thin. ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various

... their yearly procession with snakes wrapped about their necks, waists, and wrists? And was there not, too, serious business to be done? How could he secure and forward to England a few things that he must have, such as a gar alligator, a pair of mocking-birds, a Floridian flamingo, a ruby humming-bird, "a Texan horned frog, with a distinctly-developed tail, crustaceous, probably antediluvian, and credibly reported to live upon air," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... has did the same way at school purty much. It got so for a-while at one school thet not a child in school could be hired to put his hand in the wood-box, not knowin' ef any piece o' bark or old wood in it would turn out to be a young alligator or toad-frog thawin' out. Teacher hisself picked up a chip, reckless, one day, an' it hopped up, and knocked off his spectacles. Of cose it wasn't no chip. Hopper-toad frogs an' wood-bark chips, why, they favors consider'ble—lay 'em ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... The huge alligator tore up to Joam Garral, and after knocking him over with a sweep of his tail, ran at him with ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... corroborees are sometimes huge sheets of bark fastened on to poles; these sheets of bark are painted in different designs and colours, something like Moorish embroideries. Sometimes there is a huge imitation of an alligator made of logs plastered over with earth and painted in stripes of different colours, a piece of wood cut open stuck in at one end as a gaping mouth. This alligator corroboree is generally indicative of a Boorah, or initiation ceremony, being near ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... in de river fixin' ter baptize a man. Eve'ybody wuz singin' ole time 'ligion. A 'oman sung, "I don' lak dat thing 'hind you." Bout dat time de pahson en de udder man se'd an alligator. De parson sezs, "No-By-God I Don't Either." He turned de man loose en dey both ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... smiled; and then I tried the Hoosier States, where they are 'half horse and half alligator;' his figure was somewhat in the backwoodsman style. But ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... a kind of corn fruit hay 6 7 Bacon comes from the cow hog sheep 7 8 An animal that builds dams is the alligator beaver turtle 8 9 Raisins are dried currants gooseberries grapes 9 10 London is ...
— Stanford Achievement Test, Ed. 1922 - Advanced Examination, Form A, for Grades 4-8 • Truman L. Kelley

... august master's language, a tongue not to be easily translated; in fact, perfectly proof against all prying outsiders. The one way to hoodwink old Fraser is to humbug him about the great work on Thibet. That is the one soft spot in the hide of this old alligator. We have gone carefully over the reports of your secret agent at St. Heliers. Make us square with him, Captain, let him have your orders to aid us, and he can get us first hooked on to this Yankee Professor Alaric Hobbs! We will jolly him a bit, and ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... Micanopy, and his sub-chiefs, Jumper and Alligator, Osceola learned the details of that day's action. About two hundred warriors had taken their station in the outskirts of the swamp to await the coming of Major Dade and his one hundred and ten soldiers. They sent out scouts who brought them exact information concerning ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney

... the Senior Partner, in great glee. "You see I have my head screwed on the right way! But to answer you. GOTEMON's Patent Alligator's Skin Braces are attracting much attention just now, so is WIPE's Castle 2 Imperial William Champagne, which finds (I may observe confidentially) a ready sale at thirty-two shillings the dozen. Then there are AKE's Electric Tooth-brushes, and CRAX's Stained-glass ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various

... instrument is known as the Ta'khay, or Alligator: a glance at its form will readily account for its name. There seems a sort of satire in making one of the most silent of savage monsters a medium for the conveyance of sweet sounds. The Ta'khay is a stringed instrument of considerable power, and in tone is not unlike a violoncello. ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... common schools. Among animals are the beaver, otter, squirrel, coon, bear, fox, wildcat, deer, buffalo, domestic animals, wild turkeys, ducks, pigeons, eagle, hawk, wild bees, cat-fish, sword-fish, turtle, alligator, and many more. Among native products and fruits are mentioned corn, pumpkins, beans, huckleberries, grapes, strawberries, cranberries, tobacco, pawpaw, mulberry, haw, plum, apple, and persimmon. Of trees are oak, hickory, walnut, cypress, pine, birch, beech, ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... and how their spawn in turn live to spawn again is a marvel, seeing how many of the big fish-eating cannibal fish there are in Reelfoot. Here, bigger than anywhere else, you find the garfish, all bones and appetite and horny plates, with a snout like an alligator, the nearest link, naturalists say, between the animal life of today and the animal life of the Reptilian Period. The shovel-nose cat, really a deformed kind of freshwater sturgeon, with a great fan-shaped membranous ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... table-cover, on which they had breakfasted. Never had she looked so pretty. Early though it was, her enormous tiara of swarthy hair was neatly combed and coiled, not a pin was so much as loose. She wore a blue calico skirt with a white figure, and a belt of imitation alligator skin clasped around her small, firmly-corseted waist; her shirt waist was of pink linen, so new and crisp that it crackled with every movement, while around the collar, tied in a neat knot, was ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... seemed about to pursue these questions, when a stumping noise was heard outside, coming towards the door. 'Hush! here's Wegg!' said Venus. 'Get behind the young alligator in the corner, Mr Boffin, and judge him for yourself. I won't light a candle till he's gone; there'll only be the glow of the fire; Wegg's well acquainted with the alligator, and he won't take particular notice of him. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... creatures, she's the daintiest of misses, With her pretty patent leathers or her alligator ties, With her eyes inviting glances and her lips inviting kisses, As she wanders by the ocean or strolls under ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... impenetrable body, and not the soft substance of which all the marine inhabitants that he had heard of were made, such as whales, sharks, walruses, and the like. If anything, it more resembled a tortoise or an alligator. A hollow sound was emitted when it was struck, and it appeared to be made of ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood

... "An 'Alligator' press," he said, "like the one in the Standard office. It ought to be oiled, though. It needs adjusting, too. No wonder it would not work. ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard

... bank of the stream was a clump of small trees and reeds which I walked up to examine with a desire to recognise any trees belonging to known species, but to my horror, on looking into the reeds, I saw what appeared to be a huge alligator fast asleep. The men now peeped at it and all agreed that it was an alligator. I therefore retreated to a respectful and suitable distance and let fly at it with a rifle; it gave, as we thought, a kind of shake, and then took no further notice of us. I therefore took a double-barrelled gun ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... meant," said the skipper. "Sounds queer, doesn't it, in the darkness? But that's right. It's one of the great alligator fellows thrashing the water to stun the fish. This makes them turn up, and then the great ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... wind, when he saw a great black head appear on the surface and rapidly approach the shore where he was standing. Presently, as the monster emerged from the water, he found himself face to face with a great alligator rushing upon ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac

... Sir, and my dear Miles—Here I have been, moored head and starn, these ten days, as comfortable as heart could wish, in the bosom of my family. The old woman was right down glad to see me, and she cried like an alligator, when she heard my story. As for Kitty, she cried, and she laughed in the bargain; but that young Bright, whom you may remember we fell in with, in our cruise after old Van Tassel, has fairly hauled alongside of my niece, and she does little but laugh from morning to night. It's bloody hard to ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... had a new fascination. We drove along roads with over-arching trees, through whose dense leafage the noon sunshine only trickled in dancing, broken lights; umbrella trees, caoutchouc, bamboo, mango, orange, breadfruit, candlenut, monkey pod, date and coco palms, alligator pears, "prides" of Barbary, India, and Peru, and huge-leaved, wide-spreading trees, exotics from the South Seas, many of them rich in parasitic ferns, and others blazing with bright, fantastic blossoms. The air was heavy with odours of gardenia, tuberose, oleanders, roses, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... swimmer. The saint, of course, orders the beast back just at the moment when all seemed over, and is instantly obeyed. The characteristics of the monster could not be more closely identical with those of the crocodile or alligator, had the incident been narrated in ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... Alice forgotten by her own people. Her house became a Mecca for native men and women, usually performing pilgrimage privily after darkness fell, with presents always in their hands— squid fresh from the reef, opihis and limu, baskets of alligator pears, roasting corn of the earliest from windward Cahu, mangoes and star-apples, taro pink and royal of the finest selection, sucking pigs, banana poi, breadfruit, and crabs caught the very day from Pearl Harbour. Mary Mendana, ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... been bound in enamel, (richly variegated in color) in Persian silk, in seal-skin, in the skin of the rabbit, white-bear, crocodile, cat, dog, mole, tiger, otter, buffalo, wolf, and even rattle-snake. A favorite modern leather for purses and satchels, alligator-skin, has been also applied to the clothing of books. Many eccentric fancies have been exemplified in book-binding, but the acme of gruesome oddity has been reached by binding books in human skin, of which many examples are on record. It ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... them off with his club, and paddled for the shore. When he got near the shore, the alligators left him. He went a little farther up the river, and got some fish. When he came back, he kept close to the shore. One alligator twelve feet long followed him. When Bartram went ashore near his camp, the creature crept close to his feet, and lay there looking at him ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston

... of the Climate. Prospective Commercial Advantages. Voyage to the Calebar River. Geographical and Nautical Directions. The Tornadoes. Superstitious Custom of the Natives. Duke Ephraim. Visit to Duke Ephraim. The Priests of Duke Town. Mourning amongst the Natives. Attack of an Alligator. The Thomas taken by a Pirate. Departure from Fernando Po. Death of the Kroomen. Arrival in England. Advantages of the Expedition. Investigation of the Niger. Course of the Niger. Ptolemy's Hypothesis of the Niger. Sources of the African ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... of the Diocesan School at Amherst near Rangoon, and her pupils were bathing in the sea when one of them was bitten in the leg by a shark or alligator. Alarmed by this terrible shock she lost her balance and was being carried away by the tide when her sister and the head mistress both went to the rescue. Miss Grace Darling had succeeded in getting hold of her when she too was bitten and disappeared under the water. The sister behind cried ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross

... moment when Mrs. Hignett was crunching the gravel of the drive, Eustace was lying in bed, listening to Jane Hubbard as she told the story of how an alligator had once got into her tent while she was camping on the banks of the Issawassi River in Central Africa. Ever since he had become ill, it had been the large-hearted girl's kindly practice to soothe him to rest with some such ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... lexicon derived 'baz' as a Stanford corruption of {bar}. However, Pete Samson (compiler of the {TMRC} lexicon) reports it was already current when he joined TMRC in 1958. He says "It came from "Pogo". Albert the Alligator, when vexed or outraged, would shout 'Bazz Fazz!' or 'Rowrbazzle!' The club layout was said to model the (mythical) New England counties of Rowrfolk and Bassex (Rowrbazzle ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... him that I do mean. He ran young Alec Simpson of the Courier a mile down the high road last week by the collar of his coat and the slack of his breeches. You'll have read of it, likely, in the police report. Our boys would as soon interview a loose alligator in the zoo. But you could do it, I'm thinking—an ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Laing again, "the principal chief or king of this part of the Timmannee country, is about ninety years of age, with a mottled, shrivelled-up skin, resembling in colour that of an alligator more than that of a human being, with dim, greenish eyes, far sunk in his head, and a bleached, twisted beard, hanging down about two feet from his chin; like the king of the opposite district he wore a necklace of coral and leopard's teeth, but his mantle ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... a fish! I've got a fish!" he cried, as he lifted up the pole. Up out of the water with a sizzling rush flew the string and the sweet cracker bait, and the next minute out leaped the big, savage alligator that had escaped ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis

... trees, some strikingly beautiful specimens of the alligator-pear in full bloom were observed, the blossom suggesting the passion-flower. While our favorite garden plants at the North are satisfied to bloom upon lowly bushes, at the South they are far more ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... during the middle period, and well into the third period, appears to have been of a tropical character. The climatic and seasonal divisions were not at all pronounced, and both animal and vegetable life took on gigantic and grotesque forms. In the ugliness of alligator and rhinoceros and hippopotamus of our day we get some hint of what early reptilian and mammalian ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... obtain sugar, palm-wine, and rubber; what is the use of the toucan's huge beak, and how plants secure the fertilisation of their flowers. You watch the tricks of the monkey, the humming-bird's courtship, the lying in wait of the alligator, and all the ceaseless activity of the forest—that forest so monotonous in its general features, but fascinating beyond measure when the varied life-histories working out within it are realised—and you share in the keen joy ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... demoiselle," announced Mephisto to the woman who met them. She was small and wizened and old, with yellow, flabby jaws, a neck like the throat of an alligator, and straight, white hair that stood ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... affair for our paper, giving the small list of guests and the long line of refreshments—which included alligator-pear salad, right out of the Smart Set Cook Book. Moreover, when Jefferson appeared in Topeka that fall, Priscilla Winthrop, who had met him through some of her Duxbury friends in Boston, invited him to run down for a luncheon with her and the members of the royal family who ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... a clean, white, finely ribbed coral sand, with patches of brown seaweed here and there and golden spots, and in the shallower water different kinds of sponges. Out on the reef the water is a light green. The Gulf Stream runs along the outer edge of the reef, and here between Tennessee Buoy and Alligator Light, eighteen miles, is a feeding-ground for sailfish, kingfish, amberjack, barracuda, and other fishes. The ballyhoo is the main feed of these fishes, and it is indeed a queer little fish. He was made by nature, like the sardine and mullet and flying-fish, to ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... long-snouted crocodile, as Don Pablo had observed in the short opportunity he had had; and not an alligator—for it must be here remarked, that the true crocodile is found in many parts of Spanish America, and also in many of the West Indian Islands. For a long time it was believed that only alligators existed in America, and that the crocodiles ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... on this journey that he saw the most magnificent residence that he had ever beheld, the home of an old friend of his, an alligator, who possessed a number of such palatial mansions and could change his residence at any time by the simple process of swimming from one ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... so unartificial that Theresa, facing Mr. Wrenn, was bored. And the menu was foreign without being Society viands. It suggested rats' tails and birds' nests, she was quite sure. She would gladly have experimented with pate de foie gras or alligator-pears, but what social prestige was there to be gained at the factory by remarking that she "always did like pahklava"? Mr. Wrenn did not see that she was glancing about discontentedly, for he was delightedly listening to a lanky young man ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... I stepped on a smooth surface of rock and slid downhill like a human toboggan until I fetched up against a dead log. I discovered it to be a dead log after a confused interval during which I vaguely believed myself to have been swallowed by an alligator. While the alligator illusion endured I must have lain comatose and immovable. Indeed, when my senses began to come back I was still quite inert. I experienced that curious tranquillity which is said to visit those who are actually within the jaws of death. There I lay prone, ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... They say the alligator, the rhinoceros, though enclosed in bullet-proof mail, have each a spot where they are vulnerable; and fierce, reckless, unbelieving reprobates, have commonly this point in ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... out against the Indian mother that throws her child into the Ganges, to be devoured by the alligator or crocodile, but that is joy in comparison with the Christian mother's hope, that she may be in salvation while her brave boy ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... length, yielding to his importunities, he went home with his oppressed brother, intending to spend the night with him. His visit roused the fury of the wife, and "I saw in a minute," says our preacher, "that the devil was in her as big as an alligator, and I determined on my course." The woman held her tongue until after supper, when her husband asked her kindly to join them in prayers. She flew into a rage, and swore there should be no praying in her house that night. Cartwright ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... faded into the mist, caught a dark shadow in the air, and knew it was high land looming behind. And then the murk and driving rain lifted ever so little, and as it were only for that purpose; and we saw a misty bluff slope down into the sea, like the long head of a basking alligator poised upon the water, and stared into each other's eyes, and cried ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... smiled grimly. "All right, sir; if I find some meat cooked for me, I will guarantee that I will eat it, even if it is as tough as an alligator." ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... identified Wewillemuck as the snail. Some of the Indians say that it is a large lizard like an alligator. The bark picture of this creature, made by Noel Josephs, is that of a ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes

... who are blessed with this world's goods to the extent of more than one pair of pants, will send one pair at least to John Turner, Mauston, Wis., by express. We are probably as poor as any editor, but we have sent him those alligator pants that have created such a sensation in years gone by. It is true they are a little bit fringy about the bottoms, and the knees are worn through, and concealment, like a worm in the bud, has gnawed the foundation all out of them, but ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... you that the line of human development is away from that feature of the bulldog and the alligator, and toward the measured dignity of the Greek type. The possessor of that kind of jaw may enable male to conquer male, but does not make him of any more service to society; of any better ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... places; an adaptable, cosmopolitan sort of arboreal growth. At its full strength of hard, solid, time-defying wooded body on the edge of some almost inaccessible swamp of the South, where its spread-out roots and ridgy branches earn for it another common name as the "alligator tree," it is in a park or along a private driveway at the North quite the acme of refined tree elegance, all the summer and fall. It takes on a rather narrow, pyramidal head, broadening as it ages, but never betraying kin with its fellow of the swamp, ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... hail storm the broken masonry pelted the steel sides and top of the tank. But she felt them no more than does an alligator the attacks of a colony of ants. Right on through the dust the tank crushed her way. Added to the noise of the falling walls was that of the machine guns, which were barking away like a kennel of angry hounds eager to be ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton

... whose tall palmettoes came the roar of the great ocean. The blue sky sparkled over us every day; now and then we met a little solitary craft; countless water-fowl were scattered about on the surface of the stream; a school of mullet was usually jumping into the air; an alligator might sometimes be seen steadily swimming across the river, with only his nose and back exposed; and nearly always, either to the right or to the left, going north or going south, were seven pelicans, slowly flopping through ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... alligator acomin' surgin' and heavin' down the river, tryin' to drink up all the wather; or ilse it's that bully old Comfort swimmin' along, wid a bone in her teeth," declared Jimmie, after he had had ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel

... better after that, for he did the thing with great skill. When I had got so far, nothing could surprise me, and I didn't turn a hair when I found that I was expected to eat pears cut up with salad oil. But they were alligator pears, and when you tasted them, it appeared that they had nothing whatever to do with the fruit kingdom. Best of all, I liked the watermelon which came at the end, cut in little balls, looking like strawberry water ice, and soaked in champagne. I hope that all the things to eat in America won't ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... shouted Penrod, "I will first call your at-tain-shon to our genuine South American dog, part alligator!" He pointed to the dachshund, and added, in his ordinary tone, "That's him." Straightway reassuming the character of showman, he bellowed: "NEXT, you see Duke, the genuine, full-blooded Indian dog from the far Western Plains and ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... had an air of being invincible, and Man seemed at best an infrequent precarious intruder. One travelled for miles, amidst the still, silent struggle of giant trees, of strangulating creepers, of assertive flowers, everywhere the alligator, the turtle, and endless varieties of birds and insects seemed at home, dwelt irreplaceably—but man, man at most held a footing upon resentful clearings, fought weeds, fought beasts and insects for the barest foothold, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... gown, reaching to the ankles, and her hair, instead of hanging long and straight down her back, as is customary with Indian women, was twisted into a knot, and held together on the crown of the head by an elegant comb. A pair of gold ear-rings, bracelets of the same metal, and half-boots of alligator's skin and scarlet cloth, completed her graceful exterior. From her girdle was suspended a pocket knife of considerable length, and in her hand she carried an empty basket. Her step could be called neither walking nor running; it was an odd sort of frisking ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... the front of the American Hotel, on Hanover Street, Boston, and stopped. The door flew open, and out stepped a smartly dressed young man, wearing russet shoes, a light-colored box coat and a brown Alpine hat. He carried a handsome alligator-skin ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish

... East Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, in the course of which service I was in several engagements against the enemy—viz., at the Alligator Bridge, in East Florida; at Doctor Brimstone's Plantation, in Georgia; at New Port Meeting-house, in Georgia; at New Port Bridge, in Georgia; at Stone Ferry, in South Carolina; and afterwards at the reduction of Sunbury Fort, in the Province of Georgia, and the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... about to return they espied the largest and strangest lizard they ever saw. It was nearly two feet long, with a perfectly round body, a broad, flat head, short legs and a short, blunt tail. It was a chunky little animal, all covered with a rough skin like an alligator and dotted with square warts. It seemed very tame and followed Mary into the tent where she made a warm nest for it in the corner near her bunk. It was very fond of being petted and would lie and rub its ...
— Little Tales of The Desert • Ethel Twycross Foster

... scale somewhat proportioned to our geographical pretensions. Our rivers, forests, mountains, cataracts, prairies, and inland seas were to find in him their antitype and voice. Shaggy he was to be, brown-fisted, careless of proprieties, unhampered by tradition, his Pegasus of the half-horse, half-alligator breed. By him at last the epos of the New World was to be fitly sung, the great tragi-comedy of democracy put upon the stage for all time. It was a cheap vision, for it cost no thought; and, like all judicious prophecy, it muffled itself from criticism in the loose drapery of ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... have detached to the island of Malta 3,250 tonnage of transports not required for the services of this island; and I have given directions to Captain Bowen, of his Majesty's troop-ship Alligator, to remain in Mahon harbour ten days from the time of the embarkation, and then proceed for Malta, and follow the orders of Rear-admiral ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross

... the way, into the round-house, on gown, and down to your little den; where a coarse towel, and a couple of flesh-brushes smartly applied for five minutes, will produce such a circulation throughout your inward man, that, like bold Waterton, you feel as though you could back an alligator, take the sea-serpent by the beard, or kick a noisy steamboat ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... Firmstone! Don't make no mistake. This ain't you. You're the whitest boss that ever looked down my shirt collar. That's so. That's what the boys all say. Just you pull out from the company and go with us. We'll carry you right up to glory on the back of a fire-snorting alligator." ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... alligator can hardly claim any attention from us in these stories, owing to his manner of locomotion, and some other circumstances, yet I think I will introduce him to the reader, as I have two or three anecdotes about his tribe, which are worth reading, and as he comes within the qualifications ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... friends, M. Larsoneur, advocate, member of the bar at Lisieux, and archaeologist, would probably supply them with information about it. He had written a history of Port-en-Bessin, in which the discovery of an alligator was noticed. ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... listeners through screens who had forgotten to forget. No men died ever by the silken cord, and no tales ever reached the outside world of who did die down in the echoing brick cellars; there was a path that led underground to the alligator tank and a trap-door that opened just above the water edge. Night, and the fungus-fouled long jaws, and slimy, weed-filled water—the creak of rusty hinges—a splash—the bang of a falling trap—a swirl in the moonlit water, and ring after heavy, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... wise to wade waist or knee deep in a Sunderbunds creek, and clear a boat with a yo-heave-ho, for fear of some festive mugger, which means alligator, ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... once more reasserts itself—we find in Western Australia, the Swan, the Irwin, the Greenough, the Murchison, and the Gascoyne, the Ashburton, the Fortescue, the De Grey, and another Fitzroy. On the north coast, we meet with the Victoria, the Daly, the Adelaide, the Alligator, the Liverpool, the Roper, the Limmen Bight, the Macarthur, the Robinson and the Calvert, the Albert—which is the outlet for the Nicholson and the Gregory—the Leichhardt and the Flinders, the Norman, the Gilbert, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... I now had an opportunity to observe, was a fish of full one third the length of the whale itself, and of enormous bulk in proportion; it was covered with a dark rough skin, in appearance not unlike that of an alligator. The cachelot rushed upon its foes alternately, and the one thus singled out invariably fled, until the other had an opportunity to come to its assistance; the sword-fish swimming around in a wide circle at the top of the water, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... plum-pudding—"this is the cross-section of a piece of the cloth out of which our 'Stopablitey' trench-coat is manufactured. It shows the strata of the material, consisting of alternate layers of old motor tyres and reinforced concrete—the whole covered with alligator skin and proofed with our ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various

... order, though the shifting of the trade was a slow matter and the glory of the old did not pass over to the new at once, but lingered still in mighty fleets of rafts and keel-boats and in the Homeric carousals of some ten thousand of the half-horse, half-alligator breed that nightly gathered in New Orleans. Broad-horns and mud-sills they were called in derision. A strange race of aquatic pioneers, jeans and leather clad, the rifle and the setting-pole equally theirs, they came out of every stream down which ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... a better shot; I really am not.... Look at these birds—both cocks. Are they not funny—these quaint little black quail of the semi-tropics? We'll need all we can get, too. But now that you are your resistless self again I shall cease to dread the alternative of starvation or a resort to alligator tail." ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... though an ascetic at noon, was something of an epicure at night; she liked a comfortable quantity, and that of many varieties, and these of the best. Under the ministrations of Matilda she pleasurably disposed of clear soup, whitebait, a pair of squabs on toast with asparagus tips, and an alligator pear salad. ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott

... Crocodiles, Turtles, Lizards and Snakes. It is commonly said that reptiles are cold-blooded. This means that the temperature of their blood varies and is the same as the surrounding medium. The temperature of an Alligator that has been floating with its nose out of the water is the same as the surrounding water. The temperature of a turtle in the winter time is the same as the mud in which it is buried, while in the summer time it is much higher. What is true of the reptiles in respect to temperature is also true ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... scrambled out on the jam and was clawing out the butt of a log with a rude sort of boat-hook. It slid forward slowly as an alligator moves, three or four others followed it, and the green water spouted through the gaps they had made. Then the villagers howled and shouted and scrambled across the logs, pulling and pushing the obstinate timber, and the red head of ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... The nearest alligator made a snap at the seed as it sank in the river, but he missed it, and the next minute he found himself no bigger than a lizard, sitting at the bottom of a stream not half a yard across. At the other side of it Pei-Hang ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... clearly take him from one end of the long bill-board to the other, was in manifest peril, should he miss the swinging trapeze at the finish of his flight, of landing within the wide open jaws of an enormous hippopotamus—designated in the picture as, "The Behemoth of Holy Writ." An alligator, sitting upright, and bearing the legend that he was one of the "Sacred Crocodiles of the Nile, to which the Indian Mothers Throw Their Babes," was leering with a hopeful smile at the proximity of a be-spangled lady equestrian, balanced on the tip of one toe upon the back ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... it contains a lot of very straight criticism of the elite. And yet this point is not very curious either. For the elite have no objection whatever to being criticized. They rather like it, as the alligator likes being tickled with peas out of a pea-shooter. Their hides are superbly impenetrable. And I know not which to admire the more, the American's sensitiveness to pea-shooting, or the truly correct Englishman's indestructible indifference to it. Mr. Forster is a young man. ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... forth and placed it upon my knee. It was a small receptacle of finest alligator-skin, with an outside pocket, and having attached to it the tiny chain and hook by which it had been secured to the young lady's girdle. It closed with a silver clasp, and in the open outside pocket was a fine white handkerchief with some initials ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... fine flavour is found in great abundance in the woods about the mouth of the river, and, for aught I know, in every part of the country. You perceive that I am constantly discovering new luxuries for my table. Not having been able to kill a crocodile (alligator), I have offered a reward for one, which I mean to eat, dressed in soup, fricassees, and steaks. Oh! how you long to partake of ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... young fellow came up with a gun and shot him dead. They went through and through the swamp at Musquash Hollow; but found nothing better than a wicked old snapping-turtle, evil to behold, with his snaky head and alligator tail, but worse to meddle with, if his horny jaws were near enough to spring their man-trap on the curious experimenter. At Wood-End there were some Indians, ill-conditioned savages in a dirty tent, making baskets, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... deck, he was drawing the long-bow, as the Yankees call it, at a prodigious rate. He was telling how, once upon a time, he had caught a young alligator; how he had tamed it and fed it till it grew a monster twenty feet long; how he used to saddle it and bridle it, and ride through the streets of Tulcora on its back—men, women, and children screaming and flying in all directions; ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... a public stair, so that people might have free ingress and egress, without being exposed to observation; and, this tenement being furnished with the apparatus of a magician, such as globes, telescopes, a magic-lanthorn, a skeleton, a dried monkey together with the skins of an alligator, otter, and snake, the conjurer himself took possession of his castle, after having distributed printed advertisements containing the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... Smithsonian Institution, also mentions another similar head as found at Copan. This, he says, is on the side of an altar similar to that described by Stephens, except that the top wants the hieroglyphics. The sides have human figures similar to the other; on one of these is the head of an "Alligator." ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas

... Though it is of the colour of coffee, or rather of dark beer, and so impregnated with gases that it produces fever or cholera when drunk, yet it is—at least when it does not mingle with the salt water—so clear, that one might see every marking on a boa- constrictor or alligator, if he glided along the bottom ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley

... Merton in a low voice. 'Been alligator farming, or ostrich farming, or ranching, and come back shorn; they all come back. He wants to be an ecclesiastical "chucker out," and cope with Mr. Kensitt and ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... lovely?" asked Mr. Pepper Sneed, who was known as "the actor with the grouch." He was always finding fault. "Lovely alligators!" he sneered. "If you want to go to Florida, and be eaten by an alligator—go. I'll not!" ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope

... throw a child into the water arter that fashin.' And he turned to, and at it agin, as hard as he could lay on. I believe in my soul he would have nearly killed me, if it hadn't a been for a great big nigger wench he had, called Rose. My! what a slashin' large woman, that was; half horse, half alligator, with a cross of the mammoth in her. She wore a man's hat and jacket, and her petticoat had stuff enough in it to make the mainsail of a boat. Her foot was as long and as flat as a snow shoe, and her hands ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... George, that we can't sit there under the trees and eat out of a basket and have spiders and ants in things and not mind it. Here we are in the land of Smithfield hams and spoon-bread and we ate canned lobster for lunch, and alligator pear salad." ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey

... different kinds of feathers, and he had on his head a very large and high head-piece, in the form of a grenadier's cap, with prickles like a porcupine; and he made a certain noise which resembled the cry of an alligator. Our people skipped amongst them out of complaisance, though some could not drink of their tourrie; but our rum met with customers enough, and was soon gone. The alligators were killed and some of them roasted. ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano

... I found a tin of mushrooms and a package of egg-powder which had fallen down behind the locker, and there are other things as well that will go into it. But don't interrupt. Boiled yam, fried taro, alligator pear salad—there, you've got me all mixed, Then I found a last delectable half-pound of dried squid. There will be baked beans Mexican, if I can hammer it into Toyama's head; also, baked papaia with Marquesan honey, and, lastly, a wonderful ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London

... the alligator has become an important factor to the artistic manufacturer. The hide, by a new process, is tanned to an agreeable softness and used in innumerable ways. The most costly bags and trunks are made from it; pocket-books, card-cases, dining-room ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various

... If I had a good hook an' line I'd sneak a pick'rel out o' that pond. Say, remember that time I shot that alligator-" ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... handle into the water, but a look of surprise was painted on his face. In silence he looked toward the neighboring mountain and continued moving the handle of the net from one side to the other. Finally, without taking the net out of the water, he murmured in a low voice: "An alligator." ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal

... the puma, American lion, Of the old house of Leo degenerate scion. The tapir, and also that excellent diver, Alligator, or Cayman, from Amazon river; And with him the Llama, whose sad trick of spitting Was thought by the company very unfitting. But, to shorten my tale, all the New World were there, From the tiny shrew mouse to the fierce grisly ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.

... strokes of the paddle swept pirogue and paddler into a strange and lonely world. The tall cypress-trees on each bank, draped with funeral moss, cast impenetrable shadows on the water; the deathlike silence was broken only by the occasional ominous hoot of an owl or the wheezy snort of an alligator; the clammy air breathed poison. But the stars overhead were bright, and ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... while crossing a small savannah with his companions, who had gone on ahead, nearly losing his life. He perceived the strong scent of an alligator; directly afterwards he stumbled over one, and fell into the water. Recovering, he shouted to the other men, but they, terror-stricken, were flying towards the woods. A second, and even a third time he fell, every moment expecting to be seized by the jaws of the horrid monster; but he ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... knew about Dunsany and georgette and alligator pears; and Hosea Brewster was in the habit of dropping around to the Elks' Club, up above Schirmer's furniture store on Elm Street, at about five in the afternoon on his way home from the cold-storage plant. The Brewster place was honeycombed with ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... this air of official aloofness even on the street, where there were no car-windows to compromise his dignity. At the end of his run he stepped indifferently from the train along with the passengers, his street hat on his head and his conductor's cap in an alligator-skin bag, went directly into the station and changed his clothes. It was a matter of the utmost importance to him never to be seen in his blue trousers away from his train. He was usually cold and distant with men, but with all women he had a silent, grave familiarity, a special handshake, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... "See its short curved legs, just like an alligator's? And it's long. Probably its tail is tucked away inside somewhere. Alligators have long tails, you know. I saw an alligator once ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo

... done. He's a back number. There's nothing he's done that isn't on the tumble since last night. The financial gang that he downed are out already against him. They'll have his economic blood. He made a splash while he was at it, but the alligator's got him. It's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... person's appearance to call forth such a welcome. He was dressed in a half-Indian, half-hunter's garb, a long-barrelled rifle was slanted over his shoulder, and he seemed a favorable specimen of the "half-horse, half-alligator" type of the early West. But there was a shrewd look on his weather-beaten face and a humorous twinkle in his eyes that betokened a man above the ordinary frontier level, while it was very evident that the guests present looked upon ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... Still farther on he met another man who had been at Cibola, and who also told him of a great river in which there were crocodiles. This was the Mississippi, of course, and the crocodiles were alligators. As Alarcon had never seen an alligator he took the description to mean crocodile. A little farther and he heard of the negro Estevan again and the reason why the Cibolans had killed him, which was to prevent the Spaniards, whom he described, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... Watson one boy child! Bye-o-baby go sleepy! What a big alligator Coming to catch this ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various

... abound in alligators, and the men, when fishing, generally carry with them spears with long iron points which are said to be used for protection against attacks of these reptiles. Great respect is shown the alligator, and curious ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... of the macaw; the shrill chirr of the wild Guinea fowl; and the chattering of the paroquets, began to be heard from the wood. The ill—omened gaflinaso was sailing and circling round the hut, and the tall flamingo was stalking on the shallows of the lagoon, the haunt of the disgusting alligator, that lay beneath, divided from the sea by a narrow mud—bank, where a group of pelicans, perched on the wreck of one of our boats, were pluming themselves before taking wing. In the east, the deep blue ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... whiles he speculated hazily as to the size of the blister the sun was raising on his back. For amusement he tried by looking ahead to decide whether the muddy object he saw lying on the water's edge was a log of wood or an alligator. Only very soon he had to give that up. No fun in it. Always alligator. One of them flopped into the river and all but capsized the canoe. But this excitement was over directly. Then in a long empty reach he was very grateful to a troop of monkeys who came right ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... he whispered, "and yees may cotch a fish that didn't nibble at yer bait. Whisht! but do ye saa him? But isn't he a strappin' fellow, to be sure—a raal shark ten foot long, with claws like an alligator!" ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... age of nineteen he went down the Mississippi to New Orleans as a flatboat hand, temporarily joining a trade many members of which at that time still took pride in being called "half horse and half alligator." After his return he worked and lived in the old way until the spring of 1830, when his father "moved again," this time to Illinois; and on the journey of fifteen days "Abe" had to drive the ox wagon which carried ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... I asked him if he knew that Bibsy had grown another head during the night, and he almost cried when he found I was April-fooling him. He said he had always wanted a two-headed cat. Then when I asked him if he had seen the alligator under the dining room table, he wouldn't look. He just said, 'What's a nalligator?' I told him it was like Mummy's handbag only much, much bigger, and he wants to see a real one. Mummy says we must take him to the zoo someday soon. But I can't remember ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson

... us note that the art of standing began with birds. Frogs sit, and, as far as I know, every reptile, be it lizard, crocodile, alligator, or tortoise, lays its body on the ground when not actually carrying it. And these have each four fat legs. Contrast the flamingo, which, having only two, and those like willow wands, tucks up ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... but for all that you do not sympathize with them. No doubt you know the Zulu way of cooking tomatoes and the Zulu prayer before blowing one's nose; but for all that you don't understand them as well as I do, who don't know an assegai from an alligator. You are more learned, Chadd, but I am more Zulu. Why is it that the jolly old barbarians of this earth are always championed by people who are their antithesis? Why is it? You are sagacious, you are ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton

... fortunately, however, the ship turned with the tide and grounded in the mud close to the bushes, from whence there was no extricating her till the flood tide had made. In the afternoon, when it was low water, a very large alligator was discovered asleep upon the rocks, which had been properly christened the Samarang Rocks, and which were now, at low ebb, several feet above water. A party of officers and marines pulled towards him, and fired a volley at him. The brute was evidently wounded, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... which grows in the West Indies and elsewhere; the flesh is of a soft and buttery consistency and highly esteemed. The name avocado, the Spanish for "advocate," is a sound-substitute for the Aztec ahuacatl; it is also corrupted into "alligator-pear." Avocato, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... "Hamlet"—three Acts of "Hamlet"!—the first question started with 'G.tt. p..cha' 'Al..g.tor' and invited the candidate to fill in the missing letters correctly. Now I was morally certain that the words 'gutta-percha' and 'alligator' did not occur in the first three Acts of "Hamlet"; but having carefully re-read them I invited this examining body to explain itself. The answer I got was that, to understand Shakespeare, a student must first understand the English Language! ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... and pay her a visit the next time I can get on shore, and if I can take her some wonderful present from the other side of the world, I expect to cut you out in her good graces," he said, laughing. I asked him what he proposed taking. "An alligator, or a shark, or a mermaid, or an orang-outang, or something of that sort—stuffed, I ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... moving his flat, carpet-slippered feet a laborious inch; "alligator. Alligator not goin' take you 'cross lake. No use lookin'. 'Ow Peter goin' come when win' ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... is unique among rivers. I think God wished to teach the beauty of a virile soul fighting its way toward peace—and His precept was the Missouri. To me, the Amazon is a basking alligator; the Tiber is a dream of dead glory; the Rhine is a fantastic fairy-tale; the Nile a mummy, periodically resurrected; the Mississippi, a convenient geographical boundary line; the Hudson, ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... Ferlorner than a musquash, ef you'd took an' dreened his swamp; But I ain't o' the meechin' kind, thet sets an' thinks fer weeks The bottom's out o' th' univarse coz their own gillpot leaks. I hed to cross bayous an' criks, (wal, it did beat all natur',) Upon a kin' o' corderoy, fust log, then alligator; Luck'ly, the critters warn't sharp-sot; I guess 'twuz overruled They 'd done their mornin's marketin' an' gut their hunger cooled; 40 Fer missionaries to the Creeks an' runaways are viewed By them an' folks ez sent express to be their reg'lar food; Wutever 'twuz, they laid ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... notice the aquatic plants, which are found in greater profusion in the northern and eastern provinces than in any other districts of the island, owing to the innumerable tanks and neglected watercourses which cover the whole surface of this once productive province, but which now only harbour the alligator, or satisfy the thirst of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... Pieces of dyed leather of every imaginable hue were put into great machines where heavy squares of copper, set in powerful presses, stamped upon them various patterns or impressions. The designs engraved on the dies were imitations of the texture of every known sort of fancy leather. There was alligator, lizard skin, pigskin, snakeskin and sealskin; even grained leather was copied. So perfect was the likeness that it seemed impossible to tell the embossed and artificially made ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett

... eyes employs, With foreign trinkets and domestic toys. Here mummies lay, most reverently stale, And there the tortoise hung her coat of mail; Not far from some huge shark's devouring head The flying-fish their finny pinions spread. Aloft in rows large poppy-heads were strung, And near, a scaly alligator hung. In this place drugs in musty heaps decay'd, In that dried bladders and false ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... look at the dazzling chandeliers, the magnificent pier-glasses, and the splendidly-dressed people, without being giddy at the sight. Soon after our arrival, the band commenced playing, and some of the company arranged themselves for a dance. Old Sir Cayman Alligator, an East-Indian Director, led out the graceful Lady Caroline Giraffe, who, I must say, deserved the praise young Nightingale bestowed upon her, when he said, she was one of "Nature's nobility." I could not but admire her large, full eyes, which looked at you so tenderly, and the gentle bending of ...
— Comical People • Unknown

... reporter, two or three barristers, and eight or ten attorneys, are our most formidable annoyances. We have agitators in our own small way, Tritons of the minnows, bearing the same sort of resemblance to O'Connell that a lizard bears to an alligator. Therefore Calcutta for me, in preference ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... made a buncombe speech, and then Edwards, who wouldn't drink, but who knew how to tell strange stories, kept them laughing for half an hour. Edwards was a type of man not so uncommon on the frontier as those imagine who think the trapper always a half-horse, half-alligator creature, such as they read of in the Beadle novels. I knew one trapper who was a student of numismatics, another who devoted his spare time to astronomy, and several traders and trappers who were men of considerable culture, though they are generally men who ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... swarm with crocodiles, and these wage perpetual war with the jaguars. It is said, that when the jaguar surprises the alligator asleep on the hot sandbank, he attacks him in a vulnerable part under the tail, and often kills him, but let the crocodile only get his antagonist into the water, and the tables are turned, for the jaguar is held under water until ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... too high to be conveniently dusted, a few stuffed birds, and one small alligator. 'Some of these days,' said Abner to himself, 'I am goin' to get on a step-ladder and look at them birds and things; I never did properly know what ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... line to San Diego is not far—a matter of twenty miles or so. Across the mouth of San Diego bay, on the inner shore of which sits the town, North Island stretches itself like a huge alligator lying with its back above water; a long, low, sandy expanse of barrenness that leaves only a narrow inlet between its westernmost tip and the long ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... his friend Joutel, his brother Cavelier, Membre, Douay, and others, the trustiest of his followers. On the twenty-fifth, they set sail; the "Joly" and the little frigate "Belle" following. They coasted the shore of Cuba, and landed at the Isle of Pines, where La Salle shot an alligator, which the soldiers ate; and the hunters brought in a wild pig, half of which he sent to Beaujeu. Then they advanced to Cape St. Antoine, where bad weather and contrary winds long detained them. A load ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... than you," said the other; "I never can forget mine. I have no doubt an alligator on the banks of the Nile is a fearful creature—a shark when one's bathing, or a jungle tiger when one's out shooting, ought, I'm sure, to be avoided; but no creature yet created, however hungry, or however savage, can equal in ferocity a governor who has ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... exciting, and certainly the most mysterious lot of adventures through which any member of the Club ever passed. The details of what happened, however, must be reserved for the next volume in this series, which will be published under the title: "THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB IN FLORIDA; Or, Laying the Ghost of Alligator Swamp." ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock

... that of the Atlamalcan tugboat and an immense alligator surged up from the muddy depths, and kept pace with the craft, as though tied to it. His piggish eyes surveyed the two men as if meditating the crushing of the boat and its occupants in one terrific crunch, like the hippopotamus of the Nile. ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... transient rage at a rival who comes in presence of the female he himself covets or has appropriated. This murderous wrath at a rival is a feeling which, as a matter of course a human savage may share with a wolf or an alligator; and in its ferocious indulgence primitive man places himself on a level with brutes—nay, below them, for in the struggle he often kills the female, which an animal never does. This wrath is not jealousy as we know it; it lacks a number of essential moral, intellectual, imaginative elements as ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... apothecary,— And hereabouts he dwells,—which late I noted In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows, Culling of simples; meagre were his looks, Sharp misery had worn him to the bones; And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuff'd, and other skins Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves A beggarly account of empty boxes, Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds, Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses, Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show. Noting ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... Chinese who was once sailing in a canoe, either upon the river Pasig, or that of St. Mateo, suddenly perceived an alligator making for his frail bark, which it immediately capsized. On his finding himself thus plunged in the water, the unfortunate Chinese whose only prospect was that of making a meal for the ferocious animal, invoked the aid of St. Nicholas. You, perhaps, would not have done ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... Patrol an opportunity to enjoy another outing, this time while the North, where their home town lay, was swathed in snow and ice. The title of this next book will be "The Boy Scouts Down in Dixie; or, The Strange Secrets of Alligator Swamp." And the reader of this volume may rest assured that the adventure's befalling Thad and his jolly mates, Allan, Giraffe, Bumpus, Davy, Smithy, Step Hen and the Southern boy, Bob White, will afford them as rich a treat in the new story as ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter

... preconceived impression, I imagined that he was diving in search of the child. A few strokes and we were at the spot, but it was not until the Lascar crew lashed their oars violently into the water that the truth flashed upon me. It must be an alligator that was pursuing him; and soon all doubt was removed, when the master, a few moments later, rose at a short distance from us in a spot where he could feel the bottom, and ran quickly ashore, his shoulder ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... lying in the famous cove of Sydney, H.M.S. Alligator and Britomart, commanded by Captain Sir Gordon Bremer, and Lieutenant (now Captain) Owen Stanley, going to form a settlement at Port Essington on the North coast; an expedition of much interest, particularly ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... of the year, delightful weather: our wardrobe consisted of Kentucky jean trousers, boots, straw hats, two shirts, and jean hunting shirts—all thin, to be sure, but warm and comfortable enough for a day's hunt. We trudged about until noon, firing but once, and then at an alligator in a bayou, whose coat of mail laughed to scorn our puny bullets, and, barely flirting his horny tail in contempt, he slid from his perch back into the greasy and turbid stream. Seating ourselves upon a dead cotton-wood, we made a slight repast upon some cold pone, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... an Alligator.] There is a Creature here called Kobbera guion, resembling an Alligator. The biggest may be five or six foot long, speckled black and white. He lives most upon the Land but will take the water and dive under it: hath a long blew forked tongue like a sting, which he puts forth ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... basket of rice, some white thread, sections of posel—a variety of bamboo—, atilwag leaves, and some beads. For Bognitan, a jar was partly filled with tanobong, and for Gilin, a jar of basi. Cooked rice was moulded into the form of an alligator, and was spotted with red, betel saliva. This, when placed on a basket of rice, was ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... among the trees. There the Indian, without communicating his thoughts to his companion, silently divested himself of the little remnant of clothing that remained to him, and glided off among the bushes—like a jaguar advancing through the underwood to surprise the gaunt alligator on the bank of some ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... concluded, "I should have been a supper for an alligator to-night if you hadn't stuck to me. Those murdering rogues would have beaten me under easy enough, even if I hadn't been drowned before giving them the trouble. I've got to thank you ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore

... And I look twenty-three, and act twenty-five —when I'm with twenty-five-year-olds. I've been as much help and comfort to you as a pet alligator. You've always said that I was to go to college, and I've sort of trained myself to believe I was. Well, I'm not. I want to get into business, with a capital B. And I want to jump in now. This minute. I've started out to be a first-class ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... a few months longer without washing, he will have the war-paint all over his face. That one standing beside him, with a nose like a hickory knot and with feet like flat-boats, calls himself 'half horse, half alligator, tipped with a wild-cat and touched with a painter.' The rest are about the same, so that I have a good mind to march right into the Indian country on a campaign against the whole set that have been in this business—the whole set that have been in ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis

... assisted by Pedro. The natives preferred sleeping in their canoe. While we were engaged over our fish, I on a sudden looked up, and saw a huge animal of the tiger species stealing catlike towards the doctor, attracted probably by the carcass of the alligator. The creature seemed at that moment about to make its fatal spring. I had my gun providentially by my side. I shrieked out to the doctor to be on his guard, and at the same moment raised my weapon to my shoulder to fire. He had the large knife with which he had been cutting ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... had so many things to think of and talk about, that she had not thought much about Harvey except at night. Then that awful alligator haunted her until she wanted to call her mamma, but she had not ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine

... an unusual thing for Galileo to get up in the morning, after a wearisome night with a fretful, new-born star, to find his front yard full of albums. Some of them were little red albums with floral decorations on them, while others were the large plush and alligator albums of the affluent. Some were new and had the price-mark still on them, while others were old, foundered albums, with a droop in the back and little flecks of egg and gravy on the title-page. All came with a request for Galileo ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... capable of knocking down an ox, and a pair of jaws that can cut a man in two at a single snap. How would you like to encounter that sort of thing when you were having a pleasant swim, I ask you? Compared to the crocodile of Malaysia, the Florida alligator is about as formidable as a lizard. One was captured while we were at Sandakan which measured slightly over twenty-eight feet from the end of his ugly snout to the tip of his vicious tail. Before you raise your eyebrows incredulously you might take a look at ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... on old McSpinosa's plantation was chopping down banana stalks and loading the bunches of fruit on the backs of horses. Then a native dressed up in an alligator hide belt, a machete, and a pair of AA sheeting pajamas, drives 'em over to the coast and piles 'em up ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... only knows what had been in this one,—an alligator, maybe, or a snake. He's very fond of snakes. He says some of them are so useful. I try to be charitable, Fairy, and I believe I would give even Satan credit for any good there was in him,—but it is too much to ask ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston

... the diagram of a similar box, which had been carefully dissected by a member of the Intelligence Squad. This German trap was a finely polished box about fourteen inches long by six inches at its widest part, and disguised as a music box. It had polished hinges and lock and an alligator handle in the center of the top. It had also a monogram in one corner. Inside the box were two squash-shaped grenades about nine inches long and filling the whole center of the box. In the big end of the box was a compartment ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West

... a true story. All that imagination had to do with it was to find names for the boys and arrange a sequence of events. Other characters, white and Indian, appear under names similar to, or identical with their own. Any old alligator hunter, familiar with the swamps and the Ten Thousand Islands, can follow the course of the explorers from the text of the story. It would be possible for two fearless boys, imbued with a love of Nature and the wilderness, to repeat, incident by incident, the feats of the explorers in the identical ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... it stands, this Great Aquarium is wonderful—wonderful exceedingly. There is a still greater one at Brighton, holding greater wonders—a baby alligator amongst them—and we are very glad to hear that one is to be ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... the boatmen who professionally propelled the keels and flats of the Ohio, they were a class unto themselves—"half horse, half alligator," a contemporary styled them. Rough fellows, much given to fighting, and drunkenness, and ribaldry, with a genius for coarse drollery and stinging repartee. The river towns suffered sadly at the hands of this lawless, dissolute element. ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... inclined to be friendly, but nothing in the stranger's attitude invited sociability. He was looking off upon the water in the direction from which they had come, and never turned his head in response to the loud shouts, when an alligator was seen lying upon the shore, or a big turtle was sunning itself on a log. He was a Northerner, they knew from his general make-up, and a friend of Tom Hardy, the captain said, when questioned with regard to him. This last was sufficient to atone for any proclivities ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... have been an alligator, fellows. Some of the natives told me there are a few in this old stream," ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... day, the skillery-scalery alligator with the humps on his tail, and his brother, another skillery-scalery chap, whose tail was double jointed, were taking a walk through the woods together just ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis

... Malignant Calais! Low-lying alligator, evading the eye-sight and discouraging hope! Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere! In vain Cape Grinez, coming frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be stout of heart and stomach; sneaking Calais, prone ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... later a group of natives, sitting at a feast of baked alligator tail, at the mouth of the Amaceri, near the dirty, straggling riverine town of Llano, rose in astonishment as they saw issuing from the clayey, wallowing Guamoco trail a staggering band of travelers, among them two foreigners, whose clothes were in shreds and whose beards ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... and the dog, with many more, such as the beaver, the otter, the mink, and the musk-rat, which lay with their tails in the pond and their heads in the pen; and others, such as the tortoise and the alligator, whose snouts preferred water, while their tails stuck to the land. In the coop were a vast many birds and fowls, some of beautiful and varied plumage, while others were robed in dirty and dingy feathers; some were very tender, and good to eat, and some were tough, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... the Lindwurm in triumph into the city of Bruenn, where they have ever since treasured up the memento of their former tyrant. The animal, or reptile, thus preserved, is undoubtedly of the crocodile or alligator species, although I regret it was not in my power to examine it more particularly, evening having set in when I saw it in the arched passage leading to the town-hall of the city where it has been ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various

... reaching Texas was a fearful one. Rivers that overran their banks, fever-stricken lowlands where gaunt faces peered out from moldering cabins, bottomless swamps where the mud oozed greasily and where the alligator could be seen slowly moving his repulsive form—all this stretched on for hundreds of miles to horrify and sicken the emigrants who came toiling on foot or struggling upon emaciated horses. Other daring pioneers ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr



Words linked to "Alligator" :   leather, crack, crocodilian, crocodilian reptile



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com