Daily globe., 1880-07-18
SHOOTING ALLIGATORS.


Nowhere in the world can there be
found such fine shooting and fishing as
can be found in the lakes and bays of
southern Louisiana. There Is something
appallingly grand about some Of the
lakes. Giant expresses, wreathed to their
towering SUBMITS with the funeral-look-
ing moss, stand like pyramids rather
than trees. while the wind waving the
moss gives it fantastic and weird re-
semblance at a distance to floating ban
ners, or the sails of great phantom ship
gliding away nolselessly far away over
the sea. Then the streams, too, dark,
secret, and mysterious, seem to hold with
in their prisoned depths dread secrets,
dark, unfathomable, appalling. Then,
too, the forms cf animal life are as varied
as the scenery. Rank upon rank in ser
ried columns stand the roseate spoonblll
and crested crane, melancholy, sedate and
silent. Squirrels, black, red and gray,
jump from tree to tree, and violently scold
the intruders upon their domain,
long held by prescriptive
right: alligators, wildly and deceitfully
smiling, bask in the sunshine upon
thousands Of decaying logs, or swim
along lazily, the tips OF their noses just
above the water, looking like old stumps
or huge limbs Of trees. During this same
winter / had an adventure with their al
dictatorship which nearly cured me of all
desire to hunt them. One fine evening
MY Consin Herbert proposed that we
should ride over to lake some miles dis
tant which we never before visited. TAX
ing onr rifles, we we're soon speeding
along to the lake. On our way thither
my cousin informed me that the alliga-
tors in that particular lake, from some
cause, were the most feroc1ous he had
ever seen. There were wild stories
afoat among the negroes, he told me, of
a cruel planter who made his refractory
slaves wade into the lake and fight the
alligators, by which many of them were
killed and eaten.
''They certainly have had taste Of
man." said Herbert, laughing, "and you
must watch out, for they are the biggest
I have ever seen, and the most of them -
Presently we came in sight of the lake,
of which, from its very singular appear
ance, I often dream to this day. Imag-
inc deep circular basin lower than the
lowland around it, containing perhaps a
thousand acres. Not a tree could be
seen in the lake, but its banks were
clothed with gigantic funeral-looking cy-
presses waving their banners of Spanish
moss in the still evening air. Dark, deep
and sullen, it seemed a fit abode for mon
sters of all kinds.
Dismounting at some distance from the
lake, for fear that the alligators might
eat our ponies. we walked down to its
banks. Never shall I, forget the sight
that met my gaze. On every log and
their thousands of limbs there were alli-
gators Cold, dark, and Shiny, and cruel
as the waters themselves, the whole scene
seemed the realization of dream. The
alligator is very tenacious animal of
life, and nothing less than half-ounc e
ball planted in the eye or under the leg
is Immediately fatal. That they eat each
other l do not aver, but they will tear
wounded ones to pieces, know. My
Cousin Herbert, seeing some very rare
white cranes on the opposite side of the
lake, left me, and l walked out into the
lake upon two huge expresses that had
fallen across each other, and from that
vantage ground 1 opened battle. At
first l shot very coolly, and every shot
told, but hundreds Of others, attracted by
the smell of blood, lashed the water into
foam, rising beneath my very feet, glared
at me with hungry, baleful eyes, as if
they would like to tear me to pieces, as
they did their wounded companions.
All this made me nervous, and having
made shot at one very large, vicious,
fellow, which only enraged him, while
loading my rifle saw huge one on the
log behind me Inch by inch
the dreadful reptile crept toward me.
My hands trembled so that my fingers
would not hold the percussion-cap which
I vainly tried to put on the tube. An
other moment and I would have been in
reach of his tail, and would have been
swept into the lake to be torn into pieces
by the hungry monsters who seethed and
boiled at my feet. At this instant the
sharp crack of rifle rang in my ears,
and saw-yes, literally saw-the ball
strike the monster in the eye, and the
next instant he fell dead as stone from
the log. To hurry on the shore, to grasp
my cousins hand, to thank him for my
life, redeemed from death too horrible
to contemplate calmly, was but mo-
ment's work. On our way home he told
me that when boy, shooting alligators
IN this lake, the party had been compell-
ed to desist, for the alllgators pursued
them on land. From that eventful even
ing lost all desire to hunt alligaters;
and except an occasional shot at one too
saucy, I confined my shooting during the
rest of my stay to legitimate game.
A Constant Constituent.