For instance -
'Do you see that little boulder sticking out of the water yonder? well,
when I first came on the river, that was a solid ridge of rock, over
sixty feet high and two miles long. All washed away but that.' [This
with a sigh.]
I had a mighty impulse to destroy him, but it seemed to me that killing,
in any ordinary way, would be too good for him.
Once, when an odd-looking craft, with a vast coal-scuttle slanting aloft
on the end of a beam, was steaming by in the distance, he indifferently
drew attention to it, as one might to an object grown wearisome through
familiarity, and observed that it was an 'alligator boat.'
'An alligator boat? What's it for?'
'To dredge out alligators with.'
'Are they so thick as to be troublesome?'
'Well, not now, because the Government keeps them down. But they used to
be. Not everywhere; but in favorite places, here and there, where the
river is wide and shoal-like Plum Point, and Stack Island, and so on -
places they call alligator beds.'
'Did they actually impede navigation?'
'Years ago, yes, in very low water; there was hardly a trip, then, that
we didn't get aground on alligators.'
It seemed to me that I should certainly have to get out my tomahawk.
However, I restrained myself and said -
'It must have been dreadful.'
'Yes, it was one of the main difficulties about piloting.
