A good part of that afternoon and pretty nearly all of the next day I spent, with my companion, who has been intimate with alligators for many years, in wading, often waist deep, in the sunny, clear, tepid water, from one alligator hole to another, and in that way I learned much of the real life of the beast. A grown alligator is a huge and formidable-looking reptile, but so great a fear has he of man that you have but to show yourself and say “Boo!” and he will make the water boil in his frantic endeavors to escape. You may go swimming in his private pool if you will and he will crowd down in the mud of its deepest hole to escape you. Only when cornered and continually prodded will he show fight. Then he may bite you with his big mouth or club you with his bigger tail, but it will be only that he may get an opportunity to get away. There is much interesting fiction about alligators that eat pickaninnies or even grown-ups, but I do not believe it has any foundation in fact. I found several alligators’ nests, big heaps of thin chopped reeds, dried leaves and rubbish, in which in midsummer the eggs are laid, white and with a tough, leathery skin, about as big as a hen’s eggs. Last year’s eggshells still linger about these nests. The heat and steam of the sub-tropical swamp hatches the eggs without further trouble on the part of the mother. She, however, stays not far away and if you wish to see her you have but to catch one of these lithe, wriggly youngsters after they are hatched and pinch the tail. The squeak of pain will usually bring a rush from the big one, though even then the sight of a man is enough to send her back again in a hurry. The young alligators are born [Illustration: “The heat and steam of the sub-tropical swamp hatches the eggs without further trouble”] on the banks of the pool in which their mother lives, and they need to be agile else their father will eat them. As for food, every alligator hole that I have visited swarms with fish. Getting the sunlight just right on one of these alligator swimming pools I have seen, besides great store of small fishes swimming about the margin, hundreds of broad bream schooling in it, while bass and garfish two feet long lay in the deeper parts. So far as fish go the alligator need not go hungry. Often, too, he may get a duck or a heron, coming up with a snap from beneath the surface before the bird has a chance to rise from the water. I have seen a raccoon floundering and swimming in the shallows, his diet no doubt mainly fish, and he himself liable to capture by the alligator.