CHAPTER II 
AMONG THE ALLIGATORS 
THE scenery of that coast will not be found prepossessing ; 
but some of the islands, though almost repellent from with- 
out, with their unvarying fringe of oyster-covered mangrove 
growth depending in the water, are really beautiful in the 
interior, where their vegetation presents a luxuriant medley of 
palms, yucca, cactus, indiarubber trees, and all the wealth 
of festooned creepers so characteristic of the sub-tropical 
forest. There are long avenues of cabbage palm, that curious 
proof of human patience, which leads men willingly to fell a 
plant fourteen inches thick for the sake of a nut-like heart 
measuring six inches by three. Many of the pools and 
swamps in the interior are still the haunts of alligators, though 
the ranks of those hideous reptiles have ‘been greatly thinned 
by the professional skin hunters. 
35 
