ged in many alligator hunts, I
found from personal experience and minute inquiry that the species found
in North America is harmless if unmolested.

After a laborious ride we arrived at Fort Andrews, where we found a
military station of U.S. Infantry. We halted here for several days, I
having business requiring my attention, and ourselves and our beasts
needing to recruit our strength, before continuing our route to the Bay.
The forest scenery here almost defies description. Immense cedars, and
other lordly trees, rear their gigantic and lightning-scathed heads over
their smaller and less hardy but graceful neighbours; cactuses,
mimonias, and tropical shrubs and flowers, which at home are to be seen
only in conservatories or green-houses are here in profusion,

"And plants, at whose name the verse feels loath,
Fill the place with a monstrous undergrowth,
Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue,
Livid, and starred with a lurid hue,"

while innumerable forms of insect and reptile life, from the tiny yellow
scorpion to the murky alligator of eighteen feet in length, give a
forbidding aspect to the scene. Racoons, squirrels, wild turkeys,
pelicans, vultures, quails, doves, wild deer, opossums, chickmuncks,
white foxes, wild cats, wolves,--are ever and anon to be seen among the
high palmetto brakes, and the alligators in the bayous arid swamps,
"make night hideous" with their discordant bellowings and the vile odour
which they emit. The _tout ensemble_ of the place brings to recollection
those striking lines of Hood,

"O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted."

During my stay at Fort Andrews, a large detachment of U.S. troops
arrived, continuing a campaign against the recreant Indians and negroes.
The appearance of the men and officers was wretched in the extreme; they
had for weeks been beating through swamps and hammocks, thickly matted
with palmetto bush, which had torn their undress uniforms in tatters,
searching for an invisible enemy, who, thoroughly acquainted with the
everglades, defied every attempt at capture. The whole party looked
harassed, disappointed, and forlorn. General Taylor was with and had
command of this detachment, which was about 400 strong. As I had heard
this man vauntingly spoken of in the north, as the brave cotemporary of
Scott, I felt no little curiosity to see