Dissolved Alligator.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7852, 19 June 1905, Page 2

Dissolved Alligator.

An incident which illustrates th<4 unexpected difficulties which enterprise has sometimes 'to face in certain regions of Central America is related by a writer in Macinillan's Magazine. An alligator wos the. innocent cause of the misfortune, and it lived in a largo lake whence an important town drew its supply of wator. By means of powerful Jsteaindriven pumps tho water was drawn from the lake through a stout iron pipe, after which running some- eighty or ninety yards into) t'he lake from the shore, ended in an upward turn, a short arm bent at right angles to the pipe and'rising within a lew feet of the surface, Suddenly an epidemic visited the town in Question. The company's reputation being! at stake, in fact, its very existence being threatened, it was decided to straightway pull up the streets and exjmse the main pipes and conduits. The entire systeni was laid bare, from the; outskirts of the town to the very shore of the lake, but the minutest examination (ailed, to reveal any suspicious feature. Then, almost at; their, wits' end, for the, epidemic was raging- as badly as fever, the officials entered upon the last lap and turned their attention to the submerged portion of the conduit, and it,was here they found tho cause. A huge alligjator had bMen drawn towards the mouth of the main by the current, and being unable to release itself from the suction, had remained thero until it died ; and thus—no one knows how long—nil the water consumed in the town had first filtered through tha decomposed carcase of the alligator.