So long as the Frenchmen confined themselves to the frogs, (and the alligators confined themselves to the Frenchmen,) their English brethren tolerated them; but when it came to starting opposition corner groceries, and organizing competitive horse-railway companies, (which the French occasionally stepped aside from their legitimate pursuits to do,) they became a positive nuisance, you know. Besides the alligators did not always discriminate between English and French diet. If anything, the epicures of the species seemed to give preference to the former when any train of fortuitous circumstances threw an occasional Englishman in their way. [Illustration: _ENGLISH VS FRENCH._ ] The duty of the English seemed plainly indicated to them, and they, being in the majority, were not slow in acting up to it, by bringing to bear upon their rivals what may be termed an alligator policy. But we leave the rest to our artist, who with a few dashes of his pencil on page 88 has saved us reams of manuscript and barrels of ink. He merely wishes us to explain that the parties on the wharf in the last picture are English, with one exception. _CHAPTER XVI._ THE NAVIGATION ACTS—ILLICIT TOOTHPICKS—A CARGO OF TEA UNLOADED—PORK AND BEANS AS A BEVERAGE—RUMORS OF WARS. Having seen civilization comfortably settled in its new home, let us see how it conducted itself. In the year 1660 certain bills were lobbied through the English Parliament which were highly obnoxious to the American colonies then established in Virginia. These were called the Navigation Acts, and prohibited the colonists from sending their pigs to any other market than England, nor allowed them to purchase any article of commerce, not even a toothpick, from any other country, and even that commodity must be ordered from the King himself and delivered in English vessels. If any ingenious colonist was caught whittling a pine splinter or a lucifer match to a point he was looked upon as an outlaw and taken home to England in irons to answer the charge of manufacturing illegal toothpicks. The Navigation Acts were swallowed by the colonists with wry faces for a century or so, and they were beginning to get used to it. But when one fine day the Mother Country invented a new dish, called the “Stamp Act,” and began to ladle it out the docile colonists entered their gentle protest. The Stamp Act provided that the pigs and toothpicks must all bear the government stamp—the stamps, of course, to be paid for by the colonists.