100 



LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



Jians, was to act as the finishers of the law in 

 capital cases, as elephants were employed by 

 Asiatic autocrats not very many years since,* but 

 in a different manner, as may be well supposed. 

 The crocodile-executioners were kept without food 

 when judgment of death was anticipated ; and the 

 condemned wretch was dragged to the tank, where 

 the hungry monsters glared at him with their 

 green cannibal eyes, as the assistants deliberately 

 bound him hand and foot, and then tossed him alive 

 to the chasms of their gaping, serrated, clanking 

 jaws. They were also retained as guards in 

 Pegu ; the ditches of the fortifications being filled 

 with them. 



The Quaxliones crocodiliiue, those plica; et serrcc 

 dialecticorum, as they have been called, took their 

 rise from certain stories in which the crocodile 

 figures. For instance, a woman was taking a 

 walk with her little son on the banks of the Nile ; 

 a lurking crocodile carried him off, saying, he 

 should be restored if his mother responded truly. 



"Do I mean to give him up?" asked the 

 crocodile. 



" No, you don't," answered the mother ; " and, 

 therefore, according to your rule, you ought." 



Whether the mother ever got her son back 

 must be left to the judgment of those who have 

 been made to feel how many points of the law are 

 centred in possession, especially where crocodiles 

 are concerned. 



The same story is the foundation of the croco- 

 diline question put in Lucian's dialogue : 



" Have you a son ?" 



"What then?" 



" If he was wandering near a river, and a croco- 

 dile should find him and carry him off, but should 

 promise to restore him upon your giving a true 

 answer to the question, whether it was intended to 



* Mr. Sirr, in his entertaining book, Ceylon and the 

 Cingalese, (8vo. London, 1850, Shoberl,) mentions a 

 striking instance of the docility of one of these elephants. 



During the reign of the last blood-stained king of 

 Kandy, the terrible custom which had long prevailed of 

 execution by elephants, who were trained to prolong the 

 suffering of the doomed criminal by crushing the limbs 

 before the coup de grace was given, prevailed. 



One of the elephant-executioners was at that place 

 during Mr. Sirr's sojourn there, and he was desirous of 

 testing the sagacity and memory of the brute. It was of 

 huge size, and mottled, and stood quietly with the keeper 

 seated on its neck. The noble, who accompanied Mr. 

 Sirr and his party, desired the man to dismount and stand 

 on one side. 



The chief gave the word of command" Slay the 

 wretch !" 



The elephant raised his trunk, and twined it as if grasp- 

 ing a human being, and then made motions as if he were 

 depositing the patient on the earth before him, then slow- 

 ly raised his forefoot, and placed it alternately upon the 

 spots where the limbs of the sufferer would nave been. 

 This he continued to do for some minutes ; and then, as 

 if satisfied that the bones must be crushed, raised his 

 trunk high above his head, and stood motionless. 



The chief said " Complete your work." 



The elephant immediately placed one foot on the place 

 where the victim's abdomen would have been, and the 

 other upon the spot where the head must have rested, 

 appearing to exert his whole strength to crush the victim, 

 and trample out the remains of life. 



The tyrant was dethroned in 1815 ; and since that time 

 the animal had never been called upon to execute his 

 horrible office. 



do so or no, what would you say were the croco- 

 dile's intentions?" 



" You ask me a perplexing question, truly." 



But almost everything has its bright side, and 

 so has a crocodile. Did not one save good King 

 Minas when he tumbled into the water ? And 

 were they not reckoned admirable safeguards for 

 preventing robbers from crossing the river ? In 

 short, they made a very respectable figure among 

 the mob of animal and vegetable Egyptian deities, 

 and were treated accordingly, as we shall pres- 

 ently see. Silence is not only the gift, but the 

 attribute of the gods ; and, as the ancients believed 

 that a crocodile had no tongue, he had a pretty 

 safe claim, which, joined to his alleged foreknowl- 

 edge of the extent of the inundation of the Nile, 

 was all-sufficient for his deification. Hence, no 

 doubt existed of the salvation of the man devoured 

 by one of these reptiles. The sure road to heaven 

 went through a crocodile's maw ;* and even 

 those who were bitten by one were considered 

 peculiarly fortunate. 



The priests were not slow in availing them- 

 selves of these articles of belief, which they them- 

 selves had invented, and accordingly they took 

 care to have tame Crocodiles ready to receive the 

 offerings of the faithful. Strabo saw one of these 

 at Arsinoe, that " city of the crocodiles," and an 

 apolaustic life, he seems to have led. Bread, 

 meat, and wine, the contributions of travellers and 

 pious neighbors, formed his ordinary diet. Strabo's 

 host a man of consequence, and the guide of the 

 party in everything relating to sacred things led 

 the way to the pond, carrying from the table a 

 small cake, some roasted meat, and a cup of spiced 

 wine well mulled. They found Suchos, in which 

 name the crocodile rejoiced, stretched at his ease 

 on the margin. Straightway did the priests ap- 

 proach him. Some opened his mouth, one acolyte 

 popped in the cake, another crammed down the 

 meat, and the whole was finished by pouring 

 down the wine ; when Suchos plunged into the 

 pond ajid swam over to the other side to take his 

 siesta. If many pilgrims visited his shrine with 

 similar offerings in the course of the day, the 

 deity must have occasionally afforded the awful 

 spectacle of " a drunken monster," second only to 

 that of Lablache's Caliban. 



What a wondrous piece of acting that is ! The 

 brutal passion the cunning ignorance the mon- 

 ster lower than the man but higher than the brute 

 something between a chimpanzee and humanity, 

 with a strong dash of his devilish dam in him, 

 are brought out as no actor but that great artist 

 could portray them ; and when the mass warms 



up under the influence of Trinculo's bottle 



But words cannot convey the personification ; go 

 and see him. Why will not some gifted master 

 write a Sicilian opera, if Ads and Galatea will 

 not suffice, and present Lablache as Polyphemus ? 



* If a person was killed by a crocodile, or drowned in 

 the Nile, his body was embalmed by the priests, and de- 

 posited in the sacred tombs. 



