and selected a stout club for self-defense. He pressed through the alliga-
tors that blocked his ‘‘harbour’’ but found that ‘‘several very large ones’’
pursued him. He ‘‘paddled with all my might’’ but ‘‘was attacked on all
sides, several endeavouring to overset the canoe. My situation now became
precarious to the last degree: two very large ones attacked me closely, at the
same instant, rushing up with their heads and part of their bodies above
the water, roaring terribly and belching floods of water over me. They struck
their jaws together so close to my ears, as almost to stun me, and I expected
every moment to be dragged out of the boat and instantly devoured.’’ But
William saved himself by bashing the attackers on their snouts with his
club, driving them off long enough to make his retreat. William still needed
his fish, so he worked to make his way to the entrance to the lagoon. It
was here, though, that alligators ‘‘formed a line’’ that he boldly penetrated;
then he luckily caught his sufficiency without delay. An ‘‘old daring’’ alliga-
tor, ‘‘about twelve feet in length,’’ shadowed him back to his camp landing.
When William pulled his boat out of the water and began to unpack his
gear, ‘‘he rushed up near my feet, and lay there for some time, looking me
in the face, his head and shoulders out of the water.’’ William ‘‘resolved he
should pay for his temerity,’’ and remembering that his gun was already
prepared with ‘‘a heavy load,’’ he raced the few yards to his camp and, re-
turning, found his antagonist ‘‘with his foot on the gunwale of the boat,
in search of fish.’’ William ‘‘soon dispatched him by lodging the contents
of my gun in his head.’’ Now William began on the same spot to clean his
hard-won fish. But another alligator—again ‘‘a very large’’ one—appeared
next to him, and ‘‘with a sweep of his tail, he brushed off several of my fish.’’
Bartram recalled that had he not ‘‘looked up’’ the instant the creature ap-
peared, he might have been killed. ‘‘This incredible boldness of the animal
disturbed me greatly,’’ he wrote, and William knew he would have to remain
on alert the entire night.
Later he discerned the reason for the alligators’ ferocity. The St. Johns
had become alive with hundreds of thousands of ‘‘trout’’—more likely large-
mouth bass^12 —pressing to enter the lagoon. This was doubtlessly a sea-
sonal event and presumably well known to the amphibian predator popula-
tion. Alligators had thickly lined the entrance, awaiting a frenzy of feeding.
This was ‘‘a scene,’’ William wrote, so ‘‘new and surprising, which at first
threw my senses into such a tumult, that it was some time before I could
comprehend what was the matter.’’ Had not the waiting host been so dan-
gerous, William figured, he might have walked across the waters on their
heads and backs. The great feeding was a nightmare. ‘‘The horrid noise