sold forty dollars' worth of corn
last year, and all of them feed their chickens with my corn, and sell
their own."

AMONG FLORIDA ALLIGATORS.

S. C. CLARKE.

[To the several stories of hunting life which we have
introduced into these pages we may add one description of the
large game of the streams and lakes of Florida, the bone-clad
alligator. With it is given a sketch of the Everglade region
which may be of interest.]

Having organized an expedition to the great Lake Okechobee, some thirty
miles due west from the Indian River Inlet, we hired a wagon and pair of
mules to carry our tents and necessary baggage, but, no other animals
being attainable, only those of us who were fit for a tramp of nearly a
hundred miles could go. Colonel Vincent, Macleod and Herbert of the
"Victoria," Captain Morris, Roberts, and myself, with the two pilots,
Pecetti and Weldon, as guides, and Tom and a negro whom we picked up at
Capron for cooks,--ten men in all, well-armed,--we were strong enough to
insure respect from any roving party of Seminoles who might have been
tempted to rob a weaker party. There are at this time, it is supposed,
two or three hundred of these Indians in the region between Lake
Okechobee and the Keys, descendants of a few Seminoles who concealed
themselves in these inaccessible fastnesses when the greater part of
their nation was sent West in 1842. They plant some corn on the islands
of the Everglades, but live principally by the chase. Hitherto they have
not been hostile to the whites, but as they increase in numbers faster
than the white settlers, it is not impossible that they may reoccupy
Southern Florida sooner or later, it being, in fact, a region suited
only to the roving hunter....

The first day we made about twenty miles through a forest of yellow
pine, such as stretches along the Southern coast from Virginia to
Alabama, the trees standing thirty or forty feet apart, with little
underbrush. Here and there we came upon a hummock of good soil, covered
with the live-oak, magnolia, and cabbage-palm, all interlaced with vines
and creepers, so as to form an almost impassable jungle. Now the road
would lead into a wide savanna or meadow, waving with grass and browsed
by herds of wild cattle and deer. In these meadows were set bright,
mirror-like lakes, the abodes of water-fowl and wading birds, black
bass, and the grim alligator, which in these solitudes, not being
impres