r to guide me--that was worse. There
you look around; you see nothing; you hear nothing: you are alone with
God, and you tremble in his presence; your senses swim; your brain
reels; you are afraid of yourself; you are afraid of your own mind.
Deserted by everything else, you dread lest it, too, may forsake you.
There is horror in this--it is very horrible--it is hard to bear; but I
have borne it all, and would bear it again twenty times over rather than
endure once more the first hour I spent on that lonely islet in that
lonely lake. Your prison may be dark and silent, but you feel that you
are not utterly alone; beings like yourself are near, though they be
your jailers. Lost on the prairie, you are alone; but you are free. In
the islet, I felt that I was alone; that I was not free: in the islet I
experienced the feelings of the prairie and the prison combined.

"I lay in a state of stupor--almost unconscious; how long I know not,
but many hours I am certain; I knew this by the sun--it was going down
when I awoke, if I may so term the recovery of my stricken senses. I
was aroused by a strange circumstance: I was surrounded by dark objects
of hideous shape and hue--reptiles they were. They had been before my
eyes for some time, but I had not seen them. I had only a sort of
dreamy consciousness of their presence; but I heard them at length: my
ear was in better tune, and the strange noises they uttered reached my
intellect. It sounded like the blowing of great bellows, with now and
then a note harsher and louder, like the roaring of a bull. This
startled me, and I looked up and bent my eyes upon the objects: they
were forms of the _crocodilidae_, the giant lizards--they were
alligators.

"Huge ones they were, many of them; and many were they in number--a
hundred at least were crawling over the islet, before, behind, and on
all sides around me. Their long gaunt jaws and channelled snouts
projected forward so as almost to touch my body; and their eyes, usually
leaden, seemed now to glare.

"Impelled by this new danger, I sprang to my feet, when, recognising the
upright form of man, the reptiles scuttled off, and plunging hurriedly
into the lake; hid their hideous bodies under the water.

"The incident in some measure revived me. I saw that I was not alone;
there was company even in the crocodiles. I gradually became more
myself; and began to reflect with some degree of coolness on the
circumstances that sur