374 LIFE ON TSM MISSISSIPPI.
Unfortunate tourists ! People humbugged them with stupid and
silly lies, and then laughed at them for believing and printing the
same. They told Mrs. Trollope that the alligators—or crocodiles, as
she calls them—were terrible creatures; and backed up the statement
with a blood-curdling account of how one of these slandered reptiles
crept into a squatter cabin one night, and ate up a woman and five
children. The woman, by herself, would have satisfied any ordinarily-
impossible alligator; but no, these liars must make him gorge the
five children besides. One would not imagine that jokers of this
robust breed would be sensitive—but they were. It is difficult, at
this day, to understand, and impossible to justify, the reception which
the book of the grave, honest, intelligent, gentle, manly, charitable,
well-meaning Capfc. Basil Hall got. Mrs. Trollope's account of it
may perhaps entertain the reader; therefore I have put it in the
Appendix.1
1 See Appendix C-