THE ALLIGATOR'S LIFE HISTORY 35 



power digging the claws of his hind feet into the hard clay 

 of the bottom, and stirring it up as much as possible. 

 When he got a spot worked up, he moved forward or back 

 a step and went through the same performance. When 

 he got a strip of bottom five or six feet long and half as 

 wide softened, he went forward until his tail was over the 

 soft spot, when with slow powerful sweeps of his tail, he 

 quickly moved the soft earth to the sides and away from 

 the part he was deepening, down to hard ground. He con- 

 tinued these maneuvers back and forward until he had 

 made a hole about three feet deep and ten feet long and 

 built up a mud bank several inches high on each side of it. 

 He is now deepening his den where it goes under the bank. 

 In working in his den he evidently loosens the earth with 

 his claws both front and back, and pushes it out with the 

 flat of his big hind feet, and after getting the loose mate- 

 rial outside the den, he sweeps it from the hole he has dug 

 with side strokes of his tail. He does not use his jaws in 

 bringing the earth from his den as is popularly supposed." 



When alligators were still plentiful in the lowlands of 

 Louisiana, all heads of bayous, marsh ponds and swamp 

 water holes had leading to them, from one another and 

 from the larger streams, distinct trails which were known 

 to the settlers as "alligator roads." These trails were 

 usually about three feet wide, fairly straight, and all 

 vegetation in them was kept mashed down by the dragging 

 of the bodies of these heavy reptiles over them. 



Alligators are great travelers in a local sense, and for 

 no reason which a human being understands will desert a 

 certain locality, going overland considerable distances to 

 other ponds or streams. There are on Avery Island, a 

 number of artificial ponds formed by damming the valleys 

 between the hills. Some of these ponds contain as much 

 as fifty acres of water, and some of them very much less. 

 These ponds are all located from one to two miles pos- 

 sibly a little further from the lowlands, and are sepa- 



