The Saint Paul globe., 1905-01-08


man knoweth no more than he doth
where the wind nsteth, and in very few
minutes after the reeeding sof that tide
other millions were Matched that went out
on the next high tide, and thus for six
or eight days the turtle Matching busi-
ness continued.
1T was near this place that the great
Gail Borden Of Fort Bend county Texas
established his turtle canning factory,
that failed to pan dividends from the fact
that the turtles only came a few days in
the year.
Something About AIIlgators
Regarding snakes, Mr.. Noel writes.
Now as to snakes. Il was once run
ming a line through the San Jacinto
swamps IN Texas where the switch cane
was some taller than my head, and here
and there mammoth oak trees grew. The
line passed through swamp country,
with every now and then bayou from
six to ten feet wide. and twenty or thirty
feet deep, the surface of the water COM
ing near to that of the land My eye was
fixed on the object my compass had df-
rected, and using the Jacob staff as a
parter of the hard switch cane, which
I commenced going through, my compass
under my arm, old surveyor fashion, my
chain man close in the rear, I came to
one of these little bayous, in the middle
OF WHICH ana IlIuS dOOul OH6-I1dlE Tie
water space lay what supposed to be
an old log Not looking at it carefully,
made a step, and in half a second more
of time my feet would have been on the
back of an alligator, that, as I remember
now from first sight, was several times
longer than the longest fence rail ever
saw and about the size of large saw
log. In an instant, ON seeing me, it's head
and tail were in the air. No man should
aclx Vs,11 + 60 aa rIy- ha n gTaV hair
Previous to this experience myself and
brother who were strangers in that part
of Texas and were on the lookout for a
good country to settle in, concluded to
camp at Hodges bend, in Fort Bend coun-
ty-this was only few weeks before our
taking the railroad tie contract. We
staked our West Texas bronchos, who had
never heard, seen. or thought of an al
ligator much less 1000 of them, on the
prairie while we fixed ourselves to have
a good sleep, barring the mosquitoes, un-
der the wide spreading limbs of the ma
lestic live oaks that lined the lake. For
tunately we had thrown our saddles down
on the ground under limb, Wffich we
reached by springing at moment OF
great peril
I'VE had made coffee and broiled our
bacon and had eaten our supper; in
fact, had made our beds down, when we
heard noise that was somewhat of a
mixture between the believing of a mad
bull, the lowing of stampede of wild
Texas steers, the roaring OF a lion and the
growing of a hyena, all combined in one.
We never had heard before that an alli-
gator was capable of making any sort of a
noise, in fact we had heard very little
about alligators and knew next to nothing
about them. We were quickly educated and
were wonderfully wise before the next
morning In less time than it takes to
tell it we Were up in that live oak tree,
springing from the ground to the limb,
which we reached. and if there were fifty
another to get the bread and bacon that
we had, and when they quit the ground
and went back to the water there was Sc
little left Of our brides and saddles, and
nothing at all of our blankets, that we were
happy to have anything of ourselves left.
Our saddle bags and contents were al