Charles Waterton Riding a Caiman, 1827

A hand-coloured etching by Robert Cruikshank — younger brother of George — after a drawing by E. Jones, illustrating the naturalist Charles Waterton's celebrated account of wrestling and riding a black caiman in South America. The scene shows Waterton astride the thrashing reptile while a group of figures haul on a rope; the caption quotes Waterton's own Wanderings in South America (1825). Cruikshank's comic-anecdotal mode descends directly from Rowlandson and Gillray, and this tradition of sequential illustrated narrative fed directly into the Victorian comic weekly and, eventually, the comic book itself.