148 NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
ROUGH-EYED CAIMAN. 
it was rendered all the more unendurable to human beings by 
its excessive humidity. In the “’gator holes” the water was 
tepid, and teeming with fish, among the latter being catfish of 
huge proportions. At times we passed shallow pools recently 
evaporated, and giving off an overpowering stench from masses 
of decomposing fish. 
No alligators were seen in the Savannah River itself. They 
lived mostly in the surrounding swampy country, where they were 
fairly secure from molestation. As night fell upon these swamps, 
bringing a much lower temperature, the heated ground and tepid 
water of the pools gave off a steamy vapor which spread and 
stratified over the tree-tops, or floated in long, ghostly streamers 
into the shallow and undulating valleys of the hammock land. 
Owing to this apparently ever-present, nocturnal miasma, there 
was never anything but a pale and sickly moonlight over the low- 
grounds, although as we often made our way into the higher pine 
lands a few miles away, the unwholesome atmospheric conditions 
gave way to nights wonderfully clear. In those moisture-laden 
and heated swamps, the rapid development of large reptiles may 
be surmised. 
