The Audubon Reader (33 page)

Again, being in company with
Augustin Bourgeat, Esq., we met an extraordinary large alligator in the woods whilst hunting; and for the sake of destruction I may say, we alighted from our horses and approached it with full intention to kill it. The alligator was put between us, each of us provided with a long stick to irritate it, and, by making it turn its head partly on one side, afford us the means of shooting it immediately behind the foreleg and through the heart. We both discharged five heavy loads of duck shot into its body, and almost all into the same hole, without any other effect than that of exciting regular strokes of the tail, and snapping of the jaws, at each discharge, and the flow of a great quantity of blood out of the wound and mouth and nostrils of the animal; but it was still full of life and vigor, and to have touched it with the hand would have been madness; but as we were anxious to measure it and to knock off some of its larger teeth, to make powder chargers [i.e., funnels for measuring powder into a muzzle-loading gun], it was shot with a single ball just over the eye, when it bounded a few inches off the ground and was dead when it reached it again. Its length was seventeen feet; it was apparently centuries old; many of its teeth measured three inches. The shots taken were without a few feet only of the circle that we knew the tail could form, and our shots went
en masse
.

As the lakes become dry, and even the deeper connecting bayous empty themselves into the rivers, the alligators congregate into the deepest hole in vast numbers; and to this day in such places are shot for the sake of their oil, now used for greasing the machinery of steam engines and cotton mills, though formerly, when indigo was made in Louisiana, the oil was used to assuage the overflowing of the boiling juice by throwing a ladleful into the kettle whenever this was about to take place. The alligators are caught frequently in nets by fishermen; then they come without struggling to the shore and are killed by blows on the head given with axes.

When autumn has heightened the coloring of the foliage of our woods, and the air feels more rarefied during the nights and earlier part of the day, the alligators leave the lakes and seek for winter quarters by burrowing under the roots of trees or covering themselves simply with earth along their edges. They become then very languid and inactive, and at this period to sit or ride on one would
not be more difficult than for a child to mount his wooden rocking-horse. The
Negroes who now kill them put all danger aside by separating, at one blow with an axe, the tail from the body. They are afterwards cut up in large pieces and boiled whole in a good quantity of water, from the surface of which the fat is collected with large ladles. One single man kills oftentimes a dozen or more of large alligators in the evening, prepares his fire in the woods, where he has erected a camp for the purpose, and by morning has the oil rendered.

I have frequently been very much amused, when fishing in a bayou where alligators were numerous, by throwing a blown bladder on the water towards the nearest to me. The alligator makes for it at once, flaps it towards its mouth or attempts seizing it at once, but all in vain. The light bladder slides off; in a few minutes many alligators are trying to seize this, and their evolutions are quite interesting. They then put one in mind of a crowd of boys running after a football. A black bottle is sometimes thrown also, tightly corked; but the alligator seizes this easily, and you hear the glass give way under its teeth as if ground in a coarse mill. They are easily caught by Negroes, who most expertly throw a rope over their heads when swimming close to shore and haul them out instantly.

But my dear sirs, you must not conclude that alligators are always thus easily conquered: there is a season when they are dreadfully dangerous; it is during spring, during the love season. The waters have again submerged the low countries; fish are difficult of access; the greater portion of the game has left for the northern latitudes; the quadrupeds have retired to the highlands; and the heat of passion, joined to the difficulty of procuring food, render these animals now ferocious and very considerably more active. The males have dreadful fights together, both in the water and on the land. Their strength and weight adding much to their present courage, exhibit them like colossuses wrestling. At this time no man swims or wades among them; they are usually left alone at this season.

About the first days of June the female prepares a nest. A place is chosen forty or fifty yards from the water, in thick bramble or cane, and she gathers leaves, sticks and rubbish of all kinds to form a bed to deposit her eggs; she carries the materials in her mouth
as a hog does straw. As soon as a proper nest is finished, she lays about ten
eggs, then covers them with more rubbish and mud and goes on depositing in different layers until fifty or sixty or more eggs are laid. The whole is then covered up, matted and tangled with long grasses in such a manner that it is very difficult to break it up. These eggs are the size of that of a goose, more elongated, and instead of being contained in a shell are in a bladder of thin, transparent, parchment-like substance, yielding to the pressure of the fingers yet resuming its shape at once, like the eggs of snakes and tortoises. They are not eaten even by hogs. The female now keeps watch near the spot and is very wary and ferocious, going to the water from time to time only for food. Her nest is easily discovered, as she always goes and returns the same way, and forms quite a path by the dragging of her heavy body. The heat of the nest, from its forming a mass of putrescent manure, causes the hatching of the eggs, not that of the sun, as is usually believed.

Some European writers say that at this juncture the
vultures feed on the eggs and thereby put a stop to the increase of those animals. In the United States, I assure you, it is not so, nor can it be so, were the vultures ever so anxiously inclined; for as I have told you before, the nest is so hard and matted, all plastered together, that a man needs his superior strength, with a strong sharp stick, to demolish it.

The little alligators, as soon as hatched (and they all break shell within a few hours from the first to last), force themselves through and issue forth all beautiful, lively and as brisk as lizards. The female leads them to the lake, but more frequently into small detached bayous for security’s sake; for now the males, if they can get at them, devour them by hundreds, and the
wood ibis and the
sandhill cranes also feast on them.

I believe that the growth of alligators takes place very slowly, and that an alligator of twelve feet long, for instance, will most probably be fifty or more years old. My reason for believing this to be fact is founded on many experiments, but I shall relate to you one made by my friend Bourgeat. That gentleman, anxious to send some young alligators as a present to an acquaintance in New York, had a bag of young ones, quite small, brought to his house. They were put out on the floor to shew the ladies how beautiful
they were when young. One accidentally made its way out into a servant’s room and lodged itself snug from notice into an old shoe. The alligator was not missed, but upwards of twelve months after this, it was discovered about the house, full of life, and apparently scarcely grown bigger; one of his brothers that had been kept in a tub and fed plentifully had grown only a few inches during the same period.

Few animals emit a stronger odor than the alligator; and when it has arrived at great size, you may easily discover one in the woods in passing fifty or sixty yards from it. This smell is highly musky, and so strong that when near, it becomes insufferable; but this I never experienced when the animal is in the water, although I have whilst fishing been so very close to them as to throw the cork of my fishing line on their heads to tease them. In those that I have killed, and I assure you I have killed a great many, if opened to see the contents of the stomach or take fresh fish out of them, I regularly have found round masses of a hard substance resembling petrified wood. These masses appeared to be useful to the animal in the process of digestion, like those found in the craws of some species of birds. I have broken some of them with a hammer and found them brittle and as hard as stones, which they resemble outwardly also very much. And, as neither our lakes nor rivers in the portion of the country I have hunted them in afford even a pebble as large as a common egg, I have not been able to conceive how they are procured by the animals, if positively stones, or by what power wood can become stone in their stomachs.

Shippingport, Kentucky

17 April 1827

Dear Pappa,

I received a letter from Mamma a few days ago containing a copy of one of your letters to her. She says you no longer speak of our going to Europe—or of your return to us. She was well and pleased with her situation. Brother John is well also, and I suppose has grown quite a man. I long to see all of you, and hope you will soon let me know what your prospects and intentions are.

We have received your newspapers, and I am delighted with their contents. Mamma sent me a New Orleans paper containing an extract from an English paper speaking of your drawings as they deserve. I hope and think you will have no difficulty in filling your subscription list. The only objection I have to your publishing a work is that it will, I am afraid, be long before you can realize a reward for your labors, which will enable you and Mamma to enjoy the blessings of Independence and a comfortable home …

We had, last spring (1826), a very high freshet which came to 4 ft. deep in the counting room. The rise was 57 ft. 3 in. perpendicular. The canal is progressing fast and nothing interrupts the work but an occasional shower or rise in the river. Uncle Berthoud has been appointed postmaster at this place and I am his assistant …

London, England

20 June 1827

My dearest Lucy—

I have but little news to tell thee, and was in hopes to have heard from thee within these 2 or 3 last days, as thy letters have been of late very regular; but having the opportunity of Charles Bonaparte who leaves Liverpool in a few days for New York, I take it with great pleasure if it be only to let thee know that I am quite well and still in London. It is truly an immense place, but as poor Mr. Hall used to say to us at the Beech Woods, the most disagreeable place in the world probably unless indeed to dukes and great lords who can throw their multiplied thousands of pounds to procure comforts necessary to persons of their station.

I wrote to thee 3 long letters from Liverpool a few weeks ago. One of them I fear will not please thee, but I did not mean to offend thee in the least; only I do wish for thy dear self, that I am tormented day & night for the comforts thou art so well able to grant me. If I could write now, with safety, for thee to come [to England]; but I cannot, and must wait awhile, until the ways and means are quite and safely secured. My subscription list [to
The Birds of America
] goes on increasing well and I have great hopes without any sanguinity about me.

I wrote yesterday a long letter to our Victor in answer to one I received from him, the only one; going by the same opportunity, I hope it will reach him and to thee the copy of it.

The
British Museum is quite too poor to afford me the amount I ask to work for them. Charles Bonaparte has written to the Baron of Temminck who, he thinks, can give me good pay; I am to hear from him in a short time. I long to be settled for thy sake, and may God grant me the pleasure of doing so to thy liking! Charles B. said before me and many members of the
Royal Society that I was the best naturalist
in fact
existing now in his opinion, and is
extremely kind to me. He writes the Zoological Society to employ me also.

At last I am glad to inform thee that thy watch [an expensive gold pocket watch Audubon had bought for his wife soon after his arrival in Liverpool] is not lost—it has been remaining in New York in the hands of Messrs. Walker & Sons, Merchant, there because I had told Messrs. Rathbone to beg of them to forward [it] to thee by a safe private opportunity by land and not again to trust it to sea. Now however Messrs. Walker & Sons have desired to have it left to them to send, and Mr. Rathbone has wrote to them to [illegible] them on [a] way; I hope that by the time this reaches thee thou will have had it some time. I long to have from thee in answer to this when, I hope, all I have sent thee will have been received by thee.

It is expected that Parliament will break up in about a fortnight; if so I will leave London for Oxford & Cambridge &c …

I paint a great deal in oil colors at my leisure hours in the smooth style that thou admires so much and was I by accident obliged to return to America I could still from there receive the benefit that this country affords to good artists. I had the pleasure the other day of breakfasting with [English portraitist]
Sir Thomas Lawrence and he praised my work very much. I have many opportunities of seeing great lords & ladies I assure thee, but cannot say that I like many of them. The Countess of Morton is perhaps the only one perfectly unassuming and truly kind to me.
Lady Spencer the next, and the widow of Sir Stamford Raffles. Amongst the other sex, Sir
John Swinburn, the
Earl of Stanley and
Lord Meadowbank. The rest receive me merely because they admire my talents, but are overbearing, and proud to an excess. It is a rule, or rather call it a law, never to receive anybody without a previous invitation, and the waiters universally answer
“Not at home, sir.”