‘When alligators are fishing, the flapping of their tails about the water may be heard at half a mile; but to describe this in a more graphic way, suffer me to take you along with me, in one of my hunting excursions, accompanied by friends and negroes. In the immediate neighborhood of Bayou-Sarah, on the Mississippi, are extensive shallow lakes and morasses; they are yearly overflowed by the dreadful floods of that river, and supplied with myriads of fishes of many kinds, amongst which trouts are most abundant, white perch, cat fish, and alligator-gars, or devil fish. Thither, in the early part of autumn, when the heat of a southern sun has exhaled much of the water, the squatter, the planter, the hunter, all go in search of sport. The lakes are then about two feet deep, having a fine sandy bottom; frequently much grass grows in them, bearing crops of seed, for which multitudes of water-fowl resort to those places. The edges of these lakes are deep swamps, muddy for some distance, overgrown with heavy large timber, principally cypress, hung with Spanish beard, and tangled with different vines, creeping plants, and cane, so as to render them almost dark during the day, and very difficult to the hunter’s progress. Here and there in the lakes are small islands, with clusters of the same trees, on which flocks of snake-birds, wood-ducks, and different species of herons, build their nests. Fishing-lines, guns, and rifles, some salt, and some water, are all the hunters take. ‘At last, the opening of the lake is seen: it has now become necessary to drag one’s self along through the deep mud, making the best of the way, with the head bent, through the small brushy growth, caring about nought but the lock of your gun. The long narrow Indian canoe kept to hunt those lakes, and taken into them during the fresh, is soon launched, and the party seated in the bottom, is paddled or poled in search of water game. There, at a sight, hundreds of alligators are seen dispersed over all the lake; their head, and all the upper part of the body, floating like a log, and in many instances, so resembling one that it requires to be accustomed to see them to know the distinction. Millions of the large wood-ibis are seen wading through the water, mudding it up, and striking deadly blows with their bills on the fish within. Here are a hoard of blue herons――the sand-hill crane rises with hoarse note――the snake-birds are perched here and there on the dead timber of the trees――the cormorants are fishing――buzzards and carrion-crows exhibit a mourning train, patiently waiting for the water to dry and leave food for them――and far in the horizon, the eagle overtakes a devoted wood-duck, singled from the clouded flocks that have been bred there.