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.

It was so hard to tell anything about the water; the damned things shift around so--never lie still five minutes at a time.