These extortions are so very frequent, and now so well known, that the poorer classes of emigrants never apply for the ferries, but attempt the passage just as they can, and when we call to mind that the hundreds of cases which are known and spoken of must be but a fraction of those who have disappeared without leaving behind the smallest clue of their former existence and unhappy fate, the loss of human life within the last four or five years must have been awful.

Besides the alligator and the cawana, there are in these rivers many other destructive animals of a terrible appearance, such as the devil jack diamond fish, the saw fish, the horn fish, and, above all, the much dreaded gar.  The first of these is often taken in summer in the lakes and bayous, which, deprived of water for a season, are transformed into pastures; these lakes, however, have always a channel or deeper part, and there the devil jack diamond has been caught, weighing four hundred pounds and upwards.

The saw fish is peculiar to the Mississippi and its tributaries, and varies in length from four to eight feet.  The horn fish is four feet long, with a bony substance on his upper jaw, strong, curved, and one foot long, which he employs to attack horses, oxen, and even alligators, when pressed by hunger.  But the gar fish is the most terrible among the American ichthyology, and a Louisiana writer describes it in the following manner:—­

“Of the gar fish there are numerous varieties.  The alligator gar is sometimes ten feet long, and is voracious, fierce, and formidable, even to the human species.  Its dart in rapidity equals the flight of a bird; its mouth is long, round, and pointed, thick set with sharp teeth; its body is covered with scales so hard as to be impenetrable by a rifle-bullet, and which, when dry, answers the purposes of a flint in striking fire from steel; its weight is from fifty to four hundred pounds, and its appearance is hideous; it is, in fact, the shark of rivers, but more terrible than the shark of the sea, and is considered far more formidable than the alligator himself.”

It is, in fact, a most terrible animal.  I have seen it more than once seizing its prey, and dragging it down with the rapidity of an arrow.  One day while I was residing at Captain Finn’s upon the Red River, I saw one of these monsters enter a creek of transparent water.  Following him for curiosity, I soon perceived that he had not left the deep water without an inducement, for just above me there was an alligator devouring an otter.

As soon as the alligator perceived his formidable enemy, he thought of nothing but escape to the shore; he dropped his prey and began to climb, but he was too slow for the gar fish, who, with a single dart, closed upon it with extended jaws, and seized it by the middle of the body.  I could see plainly through the transparent water, and yet I did not perceive that the alligator made the least struggle to escape from the deadly fangs; there was a hissing noise as that of shells and bones crushed, and the gar fish left the creek with his victim in his jaws, so nearly severed in two, that the head and tail were towing on each side of him.