How would you like to swim across that bayou at this moment?
I dare say you would not venture it." "Not a bit of it--you are right there." "And if you did, you would, in all probability, be attacked before you could reach the opposite shore.

But our alligators are not now what they were an hundred years ago.

We know, from the best authority, that they were then much more fierce and dangerous, and often attacked men without provocation.

They have grown afraid of _us_, because they know that we are dangerous to them; and they can easily distinguish our upright form and shape from those of other animals.

Look how they have been hunted by men during the mania for alligator-leather, and see how many of them are still killed for their oil and tails.