Beadle's Dime Novels No. 33: Maum Guinea and Her Plantation Children — page 124: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

114 MAUM GUINEA. But, I tell you, dey is great in de water! I jes’ went ober der ‘holes in de skiff, and I b’lieve dey could beat me wid de best boat. I once took ole massa and anodder gentleum ober to-see de ugly beasts in der holes. Oh, de Lord! De gentleum was so skeered dat we pulled ashore, and he got sick a-hearin ’em beller, and grunt, and splash.” “ Cottontop, w’at you kill so many alligators for?” said one of the listeners. adits isin aaaitiiesneadaedtinadipatitentig.-atbuatnd negro alligator-merchant, for such he was; and to his hand was the growing scarcity of “the animals” owing more than to any other cause. The fellow hunted them chiefly in the winter with great success pecuniarily. He would travel around in the daytime and discover where the creature had buried itself for the winter's torpor. The spot was always indicated by a round ridge on the surface of the ground. Having marked the spot, he would return at night, build his fire, open the mound, cut off the alligators head, open and disembowel him. The fat of the ribs and flesh he would “try out” in his pans, and before morning would return loaded with skins and oil. The skims he sold at a good price, for fancy leather, and the oil he disposed of at a very paying rate, for machinery lucubration. In this trade he had amassed a snug sum of money, and was, therefore, quite a “ respectable darkey”—notwithstanding the negroes, for some reason, did not like the manner in which he had procured his wealth. It was whispered around among the slaves that Cottontop had twice offered his money to the old master to induce him to give Maum Guinea her freedom. The of the old cook; but, if such an offer had been made, it was from the negro’s knowledge of the negro’s heart—because he read in the old woman's face the secret of her agony - comlclbooks.com