CONTENTS PAGE ALLIGATORS. 2 STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S ALLIGATOR. 7 STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S FAREWELL TO HIS COUNTRY. 10 FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES, OF 1855. 12 [Illustration: STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S ALLIGATOR. Volume I.—No. 1.] SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 1858. [Price 2 Cents.] ALLIGATORS. [From the New York Herald, of 1849.] CHAGRES, NEW GRANADA, Jan. 2, 1849. _James Gordon Bennett_: We left New York amid the huzzas of friends, who bade us a most affectionate adieu. The passengers are from every section of the Union. There are men of talent and high integrity among us. The emigrants in the Crescent City have never been excelled, always excepting the Pilgrim Fathers. On leaving the Pier, I noticed but two females, who waved their handkerchiefs most gracefully, and imparted their sweetest smiles. The stewardess is the only female on board, who is a legion, and has contributed much to make us happy. Extraordinary harmony has prevailed. All are armed to the teeth, which warns us to respect each other. I have not heard an unfriendly word since I left New York, nor seen a wry face, save off Cape Hatteras and while crossing the Gulf Stream in the trough of the sea, with the wind blowing very hard. Christmas was the sickest and saddest day of my life. Tho Crescent was a perfect hospital. All were sick, including some of the boat’s officers, and extending even to the crew. On the first day out, the knives and forks rattled like hail, but on Christmas, hardly a man made his appearance at table. Such sighs and groans, and anathemas of gold—such longing for friends, and home and safety, and such contortions as on that unhappy Christmas, I have never seen. A countryman staggered up and down the cabin, solemnly vociferating that he had vomited a fragment of his liver, and that he must soon die, and bade us all a most doleful farewell, and besought us to kindly remember him to his wife and children. But the surgeon came and analysed his apparently ejected liver, which proved to be a huge junk of beef which he swallowed the day previous, without mastication. The same verdant genius asked the Captain, during the awful gale, what he would charge to turn round and take him back to New York. The Captain screamed, and swallowed a large cud of tobacco, and seized a handspike and threatened to dash the countryman’s brains upon the deck if he didn’t go below. Amid the horrors of the hurricane, the gentle and courageous stewardess gave us gruel, for which we rewarded her with a purse of gold. The tempest was terrible. The ocean mountains smote the frantic clouds, and the snowy spray of the ocean vales resembled lakes of glittering silver. The Crescent’s stern was mutilated, the bulwarks stove, the wheel-house injured, and a man washed into the