live-oak, while the twining grape-vine, climbing above its evergreen foliage, produces a nearer resemblance to hummocks than the surroundings of civilization which characterize refined life. Perdido, or Lost Bay (so called from the bar at its entrance being closed by quicksands), is thirty miles in length--the main tributary of this bay being a river of the same name, whose banks are covered with inexhaustible pine forests. This river furnishes excellent communication with Perdido Bay, upon which are built several fine lumber-mills. These mills are a recent enterprise, having been in operation only about four years, thus giving employment to many operatives, and furnishing an article of commerce to every part of the world. During the winter of 1873 one hundred and fifty square-rigged vessels could be counted loading with lumber, also spars over one hundred feet in length, to assist in floating ships from every part of the world. Wild game is abundant in the forests about Perdido River, such as panthers, deer, black bears, wild ducks, and turkeys. Escambia Bay is another of the beautiful sheets of water by which Pensacola is surrounded. It is eleven miles in length, and four in width. It has a tributary of the same name, which courses through rich hummock-lands, until it reaches the clear waters of the bay. The lagoons and marshes that lie near this river abound in the remarkable amphibious animals called alligators. The roaring of these creatures in spring-time is deafening. They are of slow growth, but eventually attain an immense size--a full-grown one being fifteen or twenty feet in length, with an upper jaw, which moves, three feet long, the lower jaw remaining stationary. Their skin is impenetrable to a ball, the whole body being covered with a kind of horny plates, but the head and under the fore-legs is vulnerable, and not bullet-proof. They build nests in the form of a cone, three or four feet high, and five feet at the base. They commence these nests by making a floor upon which they deposit a layer of eggs, then a stratum of mortar, seven or eight inches in thickness, then another layer of eggs, until the whole, superstructure is completed. They are said to deposit over one hundred eggs in a nest. These are hatched by the heat of the sun, together with the fermentation of vegetable matter produced in the hillock. The mother-alligator watches near during the period of incubation, and has been known to attack persons who interrupted her embryo. When her young are hatched she marches them out like a hen with her brood, leading and protecting them, while they whine and bark around her like young puppies. Their mother belongs to the cannibal species, eating up her young in their babyhood, which precludes but few of them attaining their full size. They move rapidly in water, although clumsy on land, wallowing in mud-holes like a hog.