Natural History of the Alligatof. , 277 



ed from our horses and approached it with full intention to kill 

 it. The alligator was put between us, each of us provided with 

 a long stick to irritate it, and, by making it turn its head partly 

 on one side, afford us the means of shooting it immediately be- 

 hind the foreJeg and through the heart. We both discharged 

 five heavy loads of duck-shot into its body, and almost all into 

 the same hole, without any other effect than that of exciting re- 

 gular strokes of the tail, and snapping of the jaws, at each dis- 

 charge, and the flow of a great quantity of blood out of the 

 wound, and mouth and nostrils of the animal ; but it was still 

 full of life and vigour, and to have touched it with the hand 

 would have been madness ; but as we were anxious to measure 

 it, and to knock off some of its larger teeth, to make powder 

 chargers, it was shot with a single ball just over the eye, when it 

 bounded a few inches off the ground, and was dead when it 

 reached it again. Its length was seventeen feet ; it was apparent- 

 ly centuries old ; many of its teeth measured three inches. The 

 shots taken were without a few feet only of the circle that we 

 knew the tail could form, and our shots went en masse. 



As the lakes become dry, and even the deeper connecting 

 bayous empty themselves into the rivers, the alligators congre- 

 gate into the deepest hole in vast numbers ; and, to this day, in 

 such places, are shot for the sake of their oil, now used for 

 greasing the machinery of steam-engines and cotton-mills, 

 though formerly, when indigo was made in Louisiana, the oil 

 was used to assuage the overflowing of the boihng juice, by 

 throwing a ladleful into, the kettle whenever this was about to 

 take place. The alligators are caught frequently in nets by 

 fishermen : they then come without struggling to the shore, and 

 are killed by blows on the head given with axes. 



When autumn has heightened the colouring of the foliage of 

 our woods, and the air fceis more rarified during the nights and 

 earlier part of the day, the alligators leave the lakes to seek for 

 winter quarters, by burrowing under the roots of trees, or cover- 

 ing themselves simply with earth along their edges. They be- 

 come then very languid and inactive, and, at this period, to sit 

 or ride on one, would not be more difficult than for a child to 

 mount his wooden rocking-horse. The Negroes who now kill 

 them, put all danger aside by separating, at one blow with an axe, 



JANUARY MARCH 1827. T 



