M. Audubon says:--
"When autumn has heightened the colouring of the foliage of our woods,
and the air feels more rarified during the nights and the early part of
the day, the alligators leave the lakes to seek for winter-quarters, by
burrowing under the roots of trees, or covering themselves simply with
earth along their edges. They become then 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.
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