Four Months in a Sneak-Box / A Boat Voyage of 2600 Miles Down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and Along the Gulf of Mexico

by Nathaniel H. Bishop

The order of lizards is separated into families. The family to which the alligators, crocodiles, and gavials belong, is called by naturalists CROCODILO. The distinctions which govern the separation of the family CROCODILO into the three genera of alligators, crocodiles, and gavials, consist of peculiarities in the shape of the head, in the peculiar arrangement of the teeth, webbing of the feet, and in some minor characteristics; for, outside of these not very important anatomical differences, the habits of the three kinds of reptiles are in most respects quite similar, some of the species being more ferocious, and consequently more dangerous, than others.

The alligator, also called caiman by the Spanish-American creoles, inhabits the rivers and bayous of the North and South American continents, while the crocodiles are natives of Africa, of the West Indies, and of South America. The fierce gavial genus is Asian, and abounds in the rivers of India. The alligator (A. Mississippiensis) and the crocodile (C. acutus) are the only species which particularly interest the people of the United States, for they both belong to our own fauna.

Our alligator inhabits the rivers and swampy districts of the southern states. I have never heard of their being found north of the Neuse River, though they probably ascend in small numbers some of the numerous rivers and creeks of the northern side of Albemarle Sound in North Carolina. The bayous and swamps of Louisiana and the low districts of Florida are particularly infested with these animals. The frequent visits of man to their haunts makes them timid of his presence; but where he is rarely or never seen, the larger alligators become more dangerous. During warm, sunny days this reptile delights in basking in the sunlight upon the bank of a stream for hours at a time. At the approach of man he crawls or slides from his slimy bed into the water, but if his retreat be cut off; or he become excited, a powerful odor of musk exudes from his body. During the winter months he hibernates in the mud of the bayous for days and weeks at a time. When the alligator enters the water, a pair of lips or valves close tightly, hermetically sealing his ears so that even moisture cannot penetrate them. His nostrils are protected in the same way.

As the season for incubation approaches, the female searches for a sandy spot, and digging a hole with her fore-feet, deposits there her eggs, which are somewhat smaller than those of a goose. They are usually placed in layers, carefully covered up in the sand, and if not disturbed by wild animals, are hatched by the heat of the sun. It frequently happens that the alligator cannot find a sand-bank in which to place her eggs, and on such occasions she scrapes together with her fore-feet grass, leaves, bark, and sticks, mixed with mud, and converting the whole into a low platform, deposits the eggs upon it in separate layers, each layer being sandwiched with the mixture of mud, sticks, &c., until more than one hundred white eggs, of a faint green tint, are carefully stowed away in the nest.

The exterior of the nest, which has a mound-like character, is daubed over with mud, the tail of the alligator being used as a trowel. The first duties of maternity being over, the female alligator acts as policeman until the eggs are hatched. Her office is not a sinecure, for the fowls of the air, and the creeping things upon earth, are attracted to the entombed delicacies secreted in this oven-like structure in the swamp. Many a luckless coon and cracker's pig searching for a breakfast, receive instead a blow from the strong tail of the female alligator, and are swept into the grasp of her terrible and relentless jaws.

Moisture and heat act their parts in assisting the process of incubation, and the little alligators, a few inches in length, issue from the shell, and are welcomed by their mail-clad mother into the new world.

Like young turtles just from the shell, the baby alligators make for the water, but unlike the young of the sea-turtles, the saurians have the assistance of their parent, who not unfrequently takes a load of them upon her back. From the first inception of nest-building until the young are able to take care of themselves, this reptile mother, like the female wild-turkey, resists the encroachments of her mate who would devour, not only the eggs, but his own crawling children. In fact, if opportunity were offered by the absence of the mother from the nest and the young, his alligatorship would eat up all his progeny, and exterminate his species, without a particle of regret. He has no pride in the perpetuation of his family, and it is to the maternal instincts of his good wife that we owe the preservation of the alligator.

The young avoid the larger males until they are strong enough to protect themselves, feeding in the mean time upon fish and flesh of every description. In the water they move with agility, but on land their long bodies and short legs prevent rapid motion. They migrate during droughts from one slough or bayou to another, crossing the intervening upland. When discovered on these journeys by man, the alligator feigns death, or at least appears to be in an unconscious state; but if an antagonist approach within reach of that terrible tail, a blow, a sweep, and a snapping together of the jaws prove conclusively his dangerous character. He is a good fisherman, and can also catch ducks, drawing them by their feet under water. The dog is, however, the favorite diet of these saurians, and the negroes make use of a crying puppy to allure the creature from the bottom of a shoal bayou within reach of their guns.

Though clad in a coat of thick, bony scales, a well-directed charge of buckshot from a gun, or a lead ball from a musket, will penetrate the body, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary.

The negroes in the Gulf states say that "de 'gators swallows a pine knot afore dey goes into de mud-burrows for de winter;" and the fact that pine knots and pieces of wood are found in the stomachs of these animals at all seasons of the year, gives a shade of truth to this statement. Even the hardest substances, such as stones and broken bottles, are taken in considerable quantities from the bodies of dead alligators. Their digestive organs are certainly not sensitive, their nervous systems not delicate, and their intelligence not remarkable. It gives an alligator but little inconvenience to shoot off a portion of his head with a mass of the brain attached to it; and they have been known to fight for hours with the entire brain removed.