Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1894 — Eating Alligator. [ARTICLE]

Eating Alligator.

There is reason to believe that the flesh of a young boiled alligator is barely distinguishable from veal. It is probably cleaner and more tender than much of the meat of the animals that are usually consumed ns food on the continent or the east end of London. I have never desired to taste the flesh of crocodiles, cooked or uncooked. But in India I have seen the Santals and other casteless natives greedily devour the flesh of an alligator without waiting to cook it. The flesh was very pale in color, and probably was much superior to the flesh of snakes and rats and such like creatures which form the ordinary food of the predatory Santal when hunting in his native woods. It does not fall to his lot very often to be able to circumvent and slay and eat a large alligator. He more frequently comes upon small alligators, and they go to swell the contents of his cooking pots. If, however, he is so lucky as to meet a sahib who has shot a large alligator, say about 6 feet long, he eagerly falls upon the unwonted delicacy without waiting to cook it—very much as we read in books of African adventure that the natives devour the carcasses of the large game animals that the English sportsmen do not want for their own followers.—[Longman’s Magazine.