aw fish is peculiar to the Mississippi and its tributaries, and
varies in length from four to eight feet. The horn fish is four feet
long, with a bony substance on his upper jaw, strong, curved, and one
foot long, which he employs to attack horses, oxen, and even alligators,
when pressed by hunger. But the gar fish is the most terrible among the
American ichthyology, and a Louisiana writer describes it in the
following manner:--

"Of the gar fish there are numerous varieties. The alligator gar is
sometimes ten feet long, and is voracious, fierce, and formidable, even
to the human species. Its dart in rapidity equals the flight of a bird;
its mouth is long, round, and pointed, thick set with sharp teeth; its
body is covered with scale so hard as to be impenetrable by a
rifle-bullet, and which, when dry, answers the purposes of a flint in
striking fire from steel; its weight is from fifty to four hundred
pounds, and its appearance is hideous; it is, in fact, the shark of
rivers, but more terrible than the shark of the sea, and is considered
far more formidable than the alligator himself."

It is, in fact, a most terrible animal. I have seen it more than once
seizing its prey, and dragging it down with the rapidity of an arrow.
One day while I was residing at Captain Finn's upon the Red River, I saw
one of these monsters enter a creek of transparent water. Following him
for curiosity, I soon perceived that he had not left the deep water
without an inducement, for just above me there was an alligator
devouring an otter.

As soon as the alligator perceived his formidable enemy, he thought of
nothing but escape to the shore; he dropped his prey and began to climb,
but he was too slow for the gar fish, who, with a single dart, closed
upon it with extended jaws, and seized it by the middle of the body. I
could see plainly through the transparent water, and yet I did not
perceive that the alligator made the least struggle to escape from the
deadly fangs; there was a hissing noise as that of shells and bones
crushed, and the gar fish left the creek with his victim in his jaws, so
nearly severed in two, that the head and tail were towing on each side
of him.

Besides these, the traveller through rivers and bayous has to fear many
other enemies of less note, and but little, if at all, known to
naturalists. Among these is the mud vampire, a kind of spider leech,
with sixteen short paws round a body of the form and size o