Morris and I fired, and the panther sprang from the tree among the dogs, which all piled on him at once. There was a confused mass of fur rolling on the ground, snarling, and snapping, for half a minute; then the panther broke loose, and was making off, when Weldon put half a dozen buckshot in his head, and he rolled over and over, so nearly dead that when the dogs mounted him again he could do no mischief. He had badly cut both the deer-hounds, however, which had been the first to seize him: Weldon’s fox-hounds, having more experience with this sort of game, had kept clear of his claws. It was a fine male, measuring eight feet from the nose to the tip of the tail, and we took the skin for a trophy. The tenacity of life in these large cats is very great. One of our balls had penetrated the chest, and the other had broken the fore leg, but he was still able to shake off the dogs, and would probably have escaped but for Weldon’s shot....
The next morning, March 13, we breakfasted upon a couple of gophers or land-tortoises which the men had found the day before in the pine-woods. These creatures are about eighteen inches long, and weigh twelve or fifteen pounds. A stew of the gopher and the terminal buds of the cabbage-palm is a favorite Florida dish. About noon we came suddenly upon the shore of the great lake Okechobee, which extends away to the west and south as far as the eye can reach: in fact, the shores are so low as to be invisible at any distance. This is by far the largest sheet of water in the State, being about forty miles long and thirty wide, but it is not deep. It contains on the western side several islands, which are occupied by the Seminoles. To the south and east of this lake are the Everglades, or Grassy Lakes, a region where land and water are mingled,—rivers, lakes, dry islands, and wet marshes all jumbled together in confusion, and extending over many hundred square miles, the chosen abode of the alligator, the gar-fish, the snapping-turtle, the moccasin snake, and other hideous and ferocious creatures more or less mythical, and recalling those earlier periods in the earth’s history when the great monsters, the Ichthyosauri and the Plesiosauri, wallowed and crawled over the continents.
We made our camp in a grove near the lake, almost on the spot where Taylor fought his battle in 1838. As soon as this was done the pilots went in search of a tree to make canoes. They found not far off a large cypress which served, and by the next night they had completed two canoes, each about twelve feet long and eighteen inches wide, suitable for navigating the lake and able to carry four men each. In the mean time we had commenced hostilities against the alligators, which were here very large, bold, and numerous. They lay basking in the sun upon the beach in front of our camp, some of them fifteen feet long, and it became necessary to drive them away, lest they should devour our dogs, or even our mules, for some of these monsters looked able to do it. We opened fire upon them with repeating rifles, and if any Indians were within hearing they must have supposed that General Taylor had come back again, such was the rapidity of our fusillade. The brain of the alligator is small, and developed chiefly in the region of destructiveness; but after a dozen were killed and many more wounded, it seemed to dawn upon their perceptions that this part of the lake was unsafe, and they gradually took themselves away. I disapprove of killing animals for mere sport, and destroy not deliberately except when I wish to use them for food; but the alligator is the enemy of all living creatures, the tyrant of the waters, and the death of one saves the lives of hundreds of other animals. So blaze away at the ’gators, O ye Florida tourists!—you will not kill many of them, anyway: their shells are too thick,—but spare the pelicans, who are a harmless race of fisherfolk, like ourselves.
ON THE COAST OF FLORIDA
From a Steel Plate
There were great numbers of large turtles in the lake, Chelonura and Trionyx, from two to three feet long; gar-fish also, almost as big as the alligators. These mailed warriors, like the knights of old, exercise their prowess chiefly upon the defenceless multitudes of the fresh waters, but I have heard of half a large alligator being found in the stomach of a shark at a river mouth. In spite of all these destroyers, the lake swarmed with fish. Pecetti could generally get enough black bass, pike, or perch at one or two casts of his net to feed our whole party if at any time it happened that they would not bite at the hook.
A curious feature of the lake and river scenery is the floating island. This is principally formed of the water-lettuce, or Pistia, an aquatic plant with long roots which descend to the bottom. These beds of Pistia become matted together with grass and weeds, so as to be thick enough to bear the weight of small animals, and even sometimes of man. In strong winds these islands break loose from their anchorage and float away for miles, till they bring up in some quiet bay, where the plants again take root. Lake Okechobee contains many of these floating meadows, which are a great resort for ducks and water-fowl. In fact, one would think that all the ducks, divers, herons, curlews, ibises, cranes, and waders generally had assembled here in mass-meeting. Among them are those rare and beautiful species, the scarlet ibis, roseate spoonbill, and black-necked stilt. The ducks, being birds of passage, spending their summers up North, are acquainted with men and their arts, and are comparatively shy, but the native birds are very tame and can easily be approached.
I was awakened the next morning at sunrise by sounds from the woods as of a gang of ship-carpenters or calkers at work. It was the great ivory-billed woodpecker (Picus principalis) tearing off the bark and probing the dead trees for insects and grubs, and making a noise which could plainly be heard half a mile in the still morning air. Another sound of a different character now made itself heard from the swamps. It was something like the bellowing of bulls, and proceeded from the old male alligators calling to their mates. This indicates the coming of spring, the breeding-season of these creatures. William Bartram, who travelled in East Florida a hundred years ago, gives a thrilling account of the terrible combats which he witnessed in the St. John’s River between these rival champions, who did not hesitate to attack him in his boat.