Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/375

Rh Except for the flatness of the country, which makes the drainage uncomfortably slow in wet weather, a more delightful place to pitch one's tent could hardly be found than one of these Florida hammocks. To be sure there are numerous snakes (we caught no less than twenty-three in a hammock where we camped for about a month), but they are mostly of harmless varieties and are really very graceful and interesting animals.

Dotted over the prairie are numerous small swamps and sluggish water-courses: the latter are called "sloughs" (pronounced "slews"), and differ from the former in containing, at least during wet seasons, running water. These swamps and sloughs are the home of the alligator and the deadly cotton-mouth moccasin. While searching for the

nests of the former, the latter were frequently seen, but were left severely alone, as they are quite deadly, are much more aggressive than the rattlers, and have no warning rattle to indicate the state of their tempers.

In these swamps we collected not only several hundred alligator eggs, but also numerous alligators themselves, both large and small. The baby 'gator's were hooked up out of the water with a wire noose on the end of a bamboo pole, while the large ones were either shot directly or were pulled out of their caves under the banks and killed by a rifle bullet in the back of the neck.