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 oflf an overpowering stench from masses 

 of decomposing fish. 



Xo 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. 



