en very languid and inactive,
and, at this period, to sit or ride on one would not be more difficult
than for a child to mount his wooden rocking-horse. The negroes, who now
kill them, put all danger aside by separating at one blow with an axe,
the tail from the body. They are afterwards cut up in large pieces, and
boiled whole in a good quantity of water, from the surface of which the
fat is collected with large ladles. One single man kills oftentimes a
dozen or more of large alligators in the evening, prepares his fire in
the woods, where he has erected a camp for the purpose, and by morning
has the oil extracted."

As soon as the rider feels his horse sinking, the first movement, if an
inexperienced traveller, is to throw himself from the saddle, and
endeavour to wade or to swim to the cane-brakes, the roots of which give
to the ground a certain degree of stability. In that case, his fate is
probably sealed, as he is in immediate danger of the "cawana." This is a
terrible and hideous monster, with which, strange to say, the
naturalists of Europe are not yet acquainted, though it is too well
known to all the inhabitants of the streams and lagoons tributary to the
Red River. It is an enormous turtle or tortoise, with the head and tail
of the alligator, not retractile, as is usual among the different
species of this reptile: the shell is one inch and a half thick, and as
impenetrable as steel. It lies in holes in the bottom of muddy rivers or
in the swampy cane-brakes, and measures often ten feet in length and six
in breadth over the shell, independent of the head and tail, which must
give often to this dreadful monster the length of twenty feet. Such an
unwieldy mass is not, of course, capable of any rapid motion; but in the
swamps I mention they are very numerous, and the unfortunate man or
beast going astray, and leaving for a moment the small patches of solid
ground, formed by the thicker clusters of the canes, must of a necessity
come within the reach of one of these powerful creature's jaws, always
extended and ready for prey.

Cawanas of a large size have never been taken alive, though often, in
draining the lagoons, shells have been found measuring twelve feet in
length. The planters of Upper Western Louisiana have often fished to
procure them for scientific acquaintances, but, although they take
hundreds of the smaller ones, they could never succeed to drag on shore
any of the large ones after they have been h