70 Notes for the Month. [JULY, 



the field in flames, by the terrified horses !" The ruin is now decisive. 

 Buonaparte, seeing his attempt to recover his lost ground ineffectual, 

 and his whole army in confusion, betakes himself to his chariot, and is 

 seen driving across the field, pursued by the British cavalry I *' Whole 

 heaps of men and horses lie expiring on the ensanguined plain !" The 

 chateau of Hougomont is in flames ! And upon this terrible state of 

 things the curtain falls : the whole " forming a terrific (but glorious) 

 picture of the memorable 18th of June!" Immediately after the battle, 

 Mr. Cooke " mounts his celebrated charger, Bucephalus;" and, " at full 

 speed, rides up a perpendicular rock to the Temple of Fame, at the sum- 

 mit of the fire-work tower ;" and " there deposits the British and French 

 colours (as an emblem of amity) in the Temple of Concord ! a feat 

 uneqaalled in the annals of horsemanship !" The " concert" com- 

 mences " as soon as possible after the battle." The doors are " to be 

 open at seven ;" and the " admission" is 4*. The affiche contains 

 nothing more that is entertaining or material except the printer's name ; 

 but, for the entertainment, it is only justice to say that, since the sham 

 fights at Acton and Hornsey by the " loyal London Volunteers," we 

 don't recollect to have seen any thing so terrible or so true. Most of 

 the characters in the military drama were admirably sustained. The 

 Duke of Wellington, in particular, was so well hit off, that some of the 

 visitors, from the country, believed that it was his Grace in person ; and 

 cried out in allusion to the business of the Corn Bill " Who moved the 

 amendment ? Why don't you let us have a big loaf?" &c. &c. 



When Mr. Waterton published his " Wanderings in South America/' 

 the story of his riding upon the back of a " cayman," or crocodile, in 

 the operation of catching and killing the brute, was put down pretty 

 generally as a " wandering" of the writer's fancy. The whole adventure, 

 indeed as a pleasant specimen of the Munchausen style went, we be- 

 lieve, through pretty nearly every newspaper and periodical publication in 

 England. As there is no feeling, however, more natural so there is no 

 effort more gratifying to the mind of man, than scepticism ; and certain 

 it is, that the idea of " riding upon crocodiles," or, to speak more strictly, 

 perhaps, of mounting upon their backs, as a measure of destroying them 

 the notion of executing this feat whatever might have been the extent 

 on which it was performed was no invention of Mr. Waterton's but was 

 spoken of, and in print, fifty years before Mr. Waterton was born. Po- 

 cocke, an Eastern traveller (of the last century), of undoubted cha- 

 racter, who wrote his voyages in three folio volumes, in the year 1744, 

 speaking of the crocodiles that infest the banks of the Nile, says that 

 the following is an account which he received from the people of that 

 country, of the manner of catching and killing them. 



" They make some animal cry at a distance from the river, and when 

 the crocodile comes out they thrust a spear into his body, to which a rope 

 is tied (this is in fact a common harpoon) . They then let him go into the 

 water to spend himself, and afterwards drawing him out, run a poll into 

 his mouth, and jumping on his back, tie his jaws together." 



Now, Mr. Waterton's cayman, it will be remembered, was only ten 

 feet and a half long not much larger than a good sized sturgeon ; so that 

 Mr. W.'s mastering such an antagonist, after he was tied to a rope, and with 

 a huge and barbed hook in his stomach, could hardly be an effort of very 

 particular impossibility. Not to advert to the fact (nevertheless incorn- 

 testible), that a man once upon the back of a crocodile, thirty feet long, 



