Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1892 — Pursued by an Alligator. [ARTICLE]

Pursued by an Alligator.

Young Stafford Jenkins, who lives at Egypt, Ga., and goes to school in Sylvania, had a very exciting experience with an alligator while driving from his home here to-day. The old saurian was lying by the side of the road sunning himself, and Stafford thought he was dead. As it was the largest one he had ever seen he thought he would measure it, and accordingly got out of the buggy, and, getting a fence rail for a measuring rod, he laid it down alongside of the sleeping alligator. It was a ten-foot rail, and the end reached a little over half way his body. Stafford pulled it up for a second measurement, and was just cutting a notch in the rail at the end of the animal's head, when the 'gator awoke and yawned. To suy that tho boy was frightened would but feebly express it. Ho says it seemed to him that he was at the mouth of some dark and lonely cave. He recovered sufficiently before the alligator was completely awake to spring for the buggy and put whip to the horse. -

By this time, however, the alligator was alive to the situation and gavo hot pursuit. For nearly two miles pursuer and pursuod went at lightning speed down the road, the distance neither lessening or increasing between them. Finally they came upon a party of men and the mad saurian halted. The purty gathered poles and fence rails and advanced to attack him. A terrific fight ensued, and for a while it looked as if the half dozen men would be vanquished and destroyed. Sometimes, with a sweep of his infuri ated, tail, tho alligator would cut completely in half a rail in the hands of one of his opponents. At last one of the crowd very' thoughtfully punched out the eyes of the monster, and after that he was soon conquered. The alligator, they say, measured after ho was dead over sixteen feet in length, and as to his size in circumferenco this scribe would be afraid to venture an assertion. This is the largest and most savngo alligator over heard of in this section. —[Atlanta Constitution.