A Book of the United States. Various
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while the ibis destroys all that make towards the shore. By looking attentively on this spot, you plainly see the tails of the alligators moving to and fro, splashing, and now and then, when missing a fish, throwing it up in the air. The hunter, anxious to prove the value of his rifle, marks one of the eyes of the largest alligator, and, as the hair trigger is touched, the alligator dies. Should the ball strike one inch astray from the eye, the animal flounces, rolls over and over, beating furiously about him with his tail, frightening all his companions, who sink immediately, whilst the fishes, like blades of burnished metal, leap in all directions out of the water, so terrified are they at this uproar. Another and another receives the shot in the eye, and expires; yet those that do not feel the fatal bullet, pay no attention to the death of their companions till the hunter approaches very close, when they hide themselves for a few moments by sinking backwards.
‘So truly gentle are the alligators at this season, that I have waded through such lakes in company of my friend Augustin Bourgeat, Esq. to whom I owe much information, merely holding a stick in one hand to drive them off, had they attempted to attack me. When first I saw this way of travelling through the lakes, waist-deep, sometimes with hundreds of these animals about me, I acknowledge to you that I felt great uneasiness, and thought it fool-hardiness to do so: but my friend, who is a most experienced hunter in that country, removed my fears by leading the way, and, after a few days, I thought nothing of it. If you go towards the head of the alligator, there is no danger, and you may safely strike it with a club, four feet long, until you drive it away, merely watching the operations of the point of the tail, that, at each blow you give, thrashes to the right and left most furiously.
‘The drivers of cattle from the Appelousas, and those of mules from Mexico, on reaching a lagoon or creek, send several of their party into the water, armed merely each with a club, for the purpose of driving away the alligators from the cattle; and you may then see men, mules, and those monsters, all swimming together, the men striking the alligators, that would otherwise attack the cattle, of which they are very fond, and those latter hurrying towards the opposite shores, to escape those powerful enemies. They will swim swiftly after a dog, or a deer, or a horse, before attempting the destruction of man, of which I have always remarked they were afraid, if the man feared not them.
‘Although I have told you how easily an alligator may be killed with a single rifle-ball, if well aimed, that is to say, if it strike either in the eye or very immediately above it, yet they are quite as difficult to be destroyed if not shot properly; and, to give you an idea of this, I shall mention two striking facts.
‘My good friend Richard Harlan, M.D. of Philadelphia, having intimated a wish to have the heart of one of these animals to study its comparative anatomy, I one afternoon went out about half a mile from the plantation and, seeing an alligator that I thought I could put whole into a hogshead of spirits, I shot it immediately on the skull bone. It tumbled over from the log on which it had been basking, into the water, and, with the assistance of two negroes, I had it out in a few minutes, apparently dead. A strong rope was fastened round its neck, and, in this condition, I had it dragged home across logs, thrown over fences, and handled without the least fear. Some young ladies there, anxious to see the inside of his mouth, requested that the mouth should be propped open with a stick put vertically; this was attempted, but at this instant the first stunning effect of the wound was over, and the animal thrashed and snapped its jaws furiously, although it did not advance a foot. The rope being still round the neck, I had it thrown over a strong branch of a tree in the yard, and hauled the poor creature up swinging, free from all about it, and left it twisting itself, and scratching with its fore feet to disengage the rope. It remained in this condition until the next morning, when finding it still alive, though very weak, the hogshead of spirits was put under it, and the alligator fairly lowered into it with a surge. It twisted about a little; but the cooper secured the cask, and it was shipped to Philadelphia, where it arrived in course.
‘Again, being in company with Augustin Bourgeat, Esq., we met an extraordinary large alligator in the woods whilst hunting; and, for the sake of destruction I may say, we alighted from our horses, and approached with full intention to kill it. The alligator was put between us, each of us provided with a long stick to irritate it; and, by making it turn its head partly on one side, afford us the means of shooting it immediately behind the fore leg and through the heart. We both discharged five heavy loads of duck-shot into its body, and almost all into the same hole, without any other effect than that of exciting regular strokes of the tail, and snapping of the jaws at each discharge, and the flow of a great quantity of blood out of the wound, and mouth, and nostrils of the animal; but it was still full of life and vigor, and to have touched it with the hand would have been madness; but as we were anxious to measure it, and to knock off some of its larger teeth to make powder charges, it was shot with a single ball just above the eye, when it bounded a few inches off the ground, and was dead when it reached it again. Its length was seventeen feet; it was apparently centuries old; many of its teeth measured three inches. The shot taken were without a foot only of the circle that we knew the tail could form, and our shots went en masse.
‘As the lakes become dry, and even the deeper connecting bayous empty themselves into the rivers, the alligators congregate into the deepest hole in vast numbers; and, to this day, in such places, are shot for the sake of their oil, now used for greasing the machinery of steam-engines and cotton mills, though formerly, when indigo was made in Louisiana, the oil was used to assuage the overflowing of the boiling juice, by throwing a ladleful into the kettle whenever this was about to take place. The alligators are caught frequently in nets by fishermen; they then come without struggling to the shore, and are killed by blows on the head given with axes.
‘When autumn has heightened the coloring of the foliage of our woods, and the air feels more rarefied during the nights and earlier part of the day, the alligators leave the lakes to seek for winter quarters, by burrowing under the roots of trees, or covering themselves simply with earth along their edges. They become then very languid and inactive, and, at this period, to sit or ride on one would not be more difficult than for a child to mount his wooden rocking-horse. The negroes, who now kill them, put all danger aside, by separating, at one blow with an axe, the tail from the body. They are afterwards cut up in large pieces, and boiled whole in a good quantity of water, from the surface of which the fat is collected with large ladles. One single man kills oftentimes a dozen or more of large alligators in the evening, prepares his fire in the woods, where he has erected a camp for the purpose, and by morning has the oil rendered.
‘I have frequently been very much amused when fishing in a bayou, where alligators were numerous, by throwing a blown bladder on the water towards the nearest to me. The alligator makes for it, flaps it towards its mouth, or attempts seizing it at once, but all in vain. The light bladder slides off; in a few minutes many alligators are trying to seize this, and their evolutions are quite interesting. They then put one in mind of a crowd of boys running after a football. A black bottle is sometimes thrown also, tightly corked; but the alligator seizes this easily, and you hear the glass give way under its teeth as if ground in a coarse mill. They are easily caught by negroes, who most expertly throw a rope over their heads when swimming close to shore, and haul them out instantly.’
The Tortoise is found in considerable numbers and variety. In the lakes west of the Mississippi, and near New Orleans, a soft shelled mud-tortoise is found, which epicures declare to be not much inferior to the sea-turtle of the West Indies. The gouffre is an animal apparently of the tortoise class, and is abundant in the pine barrens of the south-western states. Its shell is large and thick, and it burrows to a great depth in the ground; its strength and power are wonderful, and in many respects it is similar to the logger-head turtle. The siren is nearly two feet in length, and a very singular animal; it somewhat resembles the lamprey. It is amphibious, penetrates the mud easily, and seems to be of an order between fish and lizards. The whole of the republic is prolific in toads, frogs, and reptiles of that class; but they are found in the greatest number and variety in the regions of the warmest temperature.
V. INSECTS.
The insects of the United