THE HOME OF THE ALLIGATOR 369 
Except for the flatness of the country, which makes the drainage 
uncomfortably slow in wet weather, a more delightful place to pitch 
one’s tent could hardly be found than one of these Florida hammocks. 
To be sure there are numerous snakes (we caught no less than twenty- 
three in a hammock where we camped for about a month), but they are 
mostly of harmless varieties and are really very graceful and interesting 
animals. 
Dotted over the prairie are numerous small swamps and sluggish 
water-courses: the latter are called “sloughs” (pronounced “ slews”), 
and differ from the former in containing, at least during wet seasons, 
running water. These swamps and sloughs are the home of the alli- 
gator and the deadly cotton-mouth moccasin. While searching for the 

A TYPICAL ’GATOR HOLE OF CENTRAL FLORIDA, 
nests of the former, the latter were frequently seen, but were left 
severely alone, as they are quite deadly, are much more aggressive than 
the rattlers, and have no warning rattle to indicate the state of their 
tempers. 
In these swamps we collected not only several hundred alligator 
eggs, but also numerous alligators themselves, both large and small. 
The baby ’gators were hooked up out of the water with a wire noose 
on the end of a bamboo pole, while the large ones were either shot 
directly or were pulled out of their caves under the banks and killed 
by a rifle bullet in the back of the neck. 
