| Show the alligators of canada among the most common sights in the streams and lal es of the cana dian lumber country are all gators one cannot go up a river in the woods without seeing anywhere from two to half a dozen of them lying on the banks or floating in the water nobody hunts these alligators and there is no instance known of their attacking anybody indeed the lum bermen swim around right alongside of them and generally there are from one to three lumbermen sitting on the bad of one alligator the fact is that the canadian aall gator Is not a reptile but a boat and a boat as queer in the world of boats ad the real alligator Is queer in the world of reptiles the canadian alligator boat Is an oval flat thing with a small boiler and engine bolted to the deck without any deck house or other ire over it two spidery iron paddle wheels on the sides do the ng they look tunny enough ng along with the skeleton wheels pad dime 1 ke mad and a great raft be hind them but the funniest part of the alligator is not seen till the craft happens to get to a sin how place or till it becomes desirable for some rea son to warp a great crib of logs into shore or fasten it to the bank then the all gator proceeds to dem on strate why it is so named it chug chugs calmly to the bank goes straight at it up goes its nose on the shore and the next moment the paddle wheels cease to revolve and the queer boat trundles up on land then the amphibian character of the thing becomes visible under the keel of the all gator are wooden roll when the queer craft has been forced as far up the bank as the pad die wheels can drive it chains are run to the nearest tree and brought back to the rollers the engine gear ing ts shifted from the paddle wheels to the rollers and the all gator pro ceede to pull itself along over the land thus the lumbermen have a boat a locomotive and a stationary engine combined in their alligators and the value of such a combi nat on can be real zed when it is understood that sometimes they bring do rafts so huge that they will cover a square mile the distances over which they are floated are so great bat rafts have been known to be three years on the way from the far north to the settled country |
