
National Geographic: Realm of the Alligator
- Year:
- 1987
- 10 Views
This is a place of unseen danger
and subtle beauty.
It is a mysterious swamp called
"Okefenokee"...
the realm of the Alligator.
Okefenokee...
a forbidding place once
thought to harbor deadly diseases.
It sheltered fugitives
and inspired fear and superstition.
Today Okefenokee Swamp is a
well-know wildlife refuge.
But even for people like
biologist-photographer.
Dr. John Paling,
it is not entirely welcoming.
"Whenever I go back to Okefenokee now,
I've got mixed feelings about it".
From the air when you go across it,
it looks just so beautiful
and so serene and so natural
and so appealing.
And yet it can be a place
of such contrasts
that it seems almost as if man was never
intended to be there for long.
Okefenokee Swamp is a
A mosaic of islands, forest, marshes,
and open water.
It's famed for its alligators
and as the home of Pogo,
The comic-strip possum.
Although it overlaps
most of Okefenokee lies
in southeastern Georgia.
Okefenokee's population
of Seminole Indians
was driven out in the 1830s.
It was soon infiltrated
by white settlers called "swampers."
By the 1930s the swampers
were well established here,
Showing off alligator nests and eggs
for visiting photographers.
The swampers were a breed apart.
Many had few needs or
interests outside Okefenokee.
Those who knew them admired their
simplicity and self-reliance.
Soon after the turn of the century,
virgin stands of cypress brought
an invasion to the swamp.
This and earlier schemes
to build a ship canal
through the swamp and even to drain it
threatened to destroy Okefenokee.
But much of Okefenokee's prime timber
was cleared in less than 20 years.
Soon the swampers were alone again.
In 1937, Okefenokee was declared
eventually leave.
One old-timer said,
we have the swamp and that's good.
But the swampers are all gone.
It's just a shame we can't have both.
More than fifty years
after they were abandoned,
relics of the old logging camps
still can be found.
Now deep in regrowing forest,
they're objects of curiosity
for biologists like
Kent Vliet and John Paling.
This is an old train.
Oh, this is?
The engine was up front...
in this old cylinder.
After working here for several seasons
Paling, born in England,
has become intimately familiar
with this Georgia swamp.
And there's something even more
dramatic over here.
Come and have a guess sat this.
What do you make of this?
That's some sort of a chassis.
Right.
Is that what they carried the logs on?
Nope. Try again.
Don't forget we're on
an island in the middle of Okefenokee,
so try again.
Some sort of swamp buggy
or something like that?
It's a car. They had three cars
on the island.
Really? That's a heavy...
Heavy duty, isn't it?
Heavy chassis...
But look how well the metal's
been preserved. Yeah.
And there's another thing
to pick out too.
You see why it's so good?
It's British
Right-hand drive.
It's Durant car that they brought over
on the trains for three people.
Is that right?
that would chug up and down.
And this thing is preserved so well.
Many cars that are ten years old
don't have a chassis as good as that.
that's a very heavy chassis.
Right. I think it was just to
take people up and down.
There's a big turpentine still
at the end of the island too.
And there was a cinema,
there was a barber ship.
All gone now.
It's amazing.
Yep.
Trains.
When the logging company
finished up business,
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"National Geographic: Realm of the Alligator" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2021. Web. 23 Jan. 2021. <https://www.scripts.com/script/national_geographic:_realm_of_the_alligator_14559>.