2^6 SPOKT IN NOETH AMERICA. 



where they grow to a size elsewhere unknown. Here 

 you may see these enormous brutes stretched out in 

 the sun and displaying their proportions as if they 

 were perfectly at home. 



One day I happened to be on the shore in a tavern, 

 and near a landing-stage where a boat called for New 

 Orleans, and there I met with a hunter named Allen, 

 a man who lived on the Angelina River, and who 

 came every year, from November to April, to employ 

 his time in the catching of alligators. This Indian 

 Nimrod had a companion named Jim, who was of 

 the Bolaxis tribe. Jim was a better sportsman than 

 his master, for he never needed anything but a lasso 

 and a bowie-knife to get the better of an alligator. 

 If he saw an alligator, he crawled cautiously towards 

 him and lassoed him, and soon put an end to him 

 with his bowie-knife. One morning, I met Allen on 

 the edge of a ditch skinning an alligator, which was 

 not less than eighteen feet long, and I halted on my 

 way to take a little breakfast with the party. As I 

 was enjoy Id g my cup of coffee and venison steak, I 

 asked my companions a few questions as to their 



is forced up by the dynamic action of the soil. Within twenty miles ot 

 New Orleans is a prairie as vast in extent as the State of Delaware. 

 This district is inhabited by negroes who have escaped from Jamaica 

 and the "West Indies, and who live there very comfortably. Here and 

 there, around an Indian hut, may be found a clump of oaks like an 

 oasis, and if it were not for the action of the soil, the prairie of Louisi- 

 ana would tremble no more, and the harvests would be better and 

 better every year. 



