waste much powder
and ball in shooting them. The Indians, who are obliged to pay dear for
their ammunition, are equally careful not to throw it away on objects
that bring no remunerating value. The natural consequence is, that the
wolves are allowed to multiply; and some parts of the country are
completely overrun by them. The Indians catch numbers of them in traps,
which they set in the vicinity of those places where their tame horses
are sent to graze. The traps are merely excavations covered over with
slight switches and hay, and baited with meat, &c., into which the
wolves fall, and being unable to extricate themselves, they perish by
famine or the knife of the Indian. These destructive animals annually
destroy numbers of horses, particularly during the winter season, when
the latter get entangled in the snow, in which situation they become an
easy prey to their light-footed pursuers, ten or fifteen of which will
often fasten on one animal, and with their long fangs in a few minutes
separate the head from the body. If, however, the horses are not
prevented from using their legs, they sometimes punish the enemy
severely; as an instance of this, I saw one morning the bodies of two of
our horses which had been killed the night before, and around were lying
eight dead and maimed wolves; some with their brains scattered about,
and others with their limbs and ribs broken by the hoofs of the furious
animals in their vain attempts to escape from their assailants."

Although the wolves of America are the most daring of all the beasts of
prey on that continent, they are by no means so courageous or ferocious
as those of Europe, particularly in Spain or the south of France, in
which countries they commit dreadful ravages both on man and beast;
whereas a prairie wolf, except forced by desperation, will seldom or
never attack a human being.

I have said that the danger that attends the traveller in the great
prairies is trifling; but it is very different in the eastern swamps and
mud-holes, where the enemy, ever on the watch, is also always invisible,
and where the speed of the horse and the arms of the rider are of no
avail, for they are then swimming in the deep water, or splashing,
breast-deep, in the foul mud.

Among these monsters of the swamps and lagoons of stagnant waters, the
alligator ranks the first in size and voracity; yet man has nothing to
fear from him; and though there are many stories among the cotton
plante