Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 July 1877 — A Bear Repulses an Alligator. [ARTICLE]

A Bear Repulses an Alligator.

[Florida Sun and Press.) A party of six gentlemen were taking a sail up McGirt’e creek on Sunday afternoon. While proceeding up the stream their attention was arrested by the spectacle of a black animal, which they took to be a hog, swim ming from one shore to the ether. Suddenly the serrated back of an alligator, who doubtless considered himself insulted by the invasion of his domain, was seeD cleaving the water in the direction of the intruder. As his ponderous jaws were about to close upon the victim, bruin raised one of his massive paws and bestowed a hearty thwack upon the skull of the saurian, which caused him to disappear beneath the surface. He soon emerged again, but the near approach of the boat prevented a renewal of the contest. The party were, unfortunately, unprovided with weapons of any description. One of them, seizing a plank lying in the boat, strnck the bear several blows, and another broke an oar over his head, but failed to prevent his rdaching the bank, up which he scrambled more frightened than injured. He was well grown, weighing probably two hundred and fifty pounds.