And everywhere alligators, moccasins, lizards and other reptiles…

An excerpt from the journal of Howell C. Jackson describing the beautiful Suwannee River and its reptile inhabitants as he surveyed the Okefenokee Swamp in 1890…

Our [survey] line crossed the Suwanee River about half a mile below Mixon‘s ferry. The stream here is about 95 feet wide, with a swift current, and waist deep. The water is the color of diluted coffee. As I stood on its edge, I thought of that beautiful song so familiar to all your readers, The Old Folks at Home, which commences “Way Down upon the Suwanee River”, the exquisite pathos of which has brought tears to the eyes of thousands; then I gazed “way down upon the Suwanee River,” and my eye fell upon a huge alligator slowly raising his noisome person from the water to the sunshine, there upon another swimming across the stream, there upon a third, sleeping upon a decayed cypress stump, and everywhere upon moccasins, lizards and other reptiles, either sunning themselves to sleep, or moving about in quest of prey. 

• Howell C. Jackson from Camp Chesser, Okefinokee Swamp, July 14, 1890

Trowell, C.T.. The Suwannee Canal Company in the Okefenokee Swamp. South Georgia College, 1984. Page 130.