260 WILD BEASTS AND THEIR WAYS CHAP. 



for the reason already given, and after gazing at us for a short 

 time, the great heads sank below the surface ; the scene was then 

 restricted to a rather flat granite island, without any boulders, and 

 a dense tuft of papyrus rushes on the western side. 



I would not presume to estimate the length of these extraor- 

 dinary creatures, but the deep and broad river, flowing silently 

 through one of the oldest portions of the earth, suggested, by the 

 exhibition of these mighty forms, that no change in the inhabit- 

 ants of the stream had taken place since the original creation. 



Crocodiles, like all other creatures, vary in their characters 

 according to the conditions under which they exist. Although 

 they prey upon any living thing that comes within their reach, 

 they, as inhabitants of the water, are by nature fish-eaters. When 

 cutting wearily during two seasons through the dense obstructions 

 of aquatic vegetation which had closed the navigation of the 

 White Nile, we occasionally entered upon horrible solitudes of 

 shallow swamp, peopled by countless snakes ; the air, sultry and 

 redolent of malaria, was humming with mosquitoes ; and in this 

 chaos, if a few sqxiare yards of sandbank appeared above the 

 marsh, there were the belly scales of some large crocodile printed 

 upon the surface. Nothing could be more horrible than such 

 associations : the loud hoarse snorts of the hippopotamus at night, 

 and the reptiles that were present in the daylight ; these formed 

 a combination which conveyed an indelible impression of ante- 

 diluvian realities. This was the natural position of the crocodile, 

 in which fish must have constituted its nourishment. 



I remember upon one occasion, in the Albert Nyanza, we found 

 one half of a fish (Perca Nilotica) that was bitten as clean 

 through as though divided by a knife ; this was the work of a 

 snap from the jaws of a crocodile. The fish would have weighed 

 about 70 Ibs. when whole. It was almost certain that the fish 

 caught nightly in our trammel-nets would be taken by crocodiles ; 

 and, not content with an endeavour to abstract them, they tore 

 the net into large holes with teeth and claws, in their determina- 

 tion to possess them. 



The moat dangerous time for a man to enter a river is just 

 before or after sunset, as the fish invariably visit the shallows 

 during evening ; the crocodiles follow them, and they may fre- 

 quently be seen at that hour dashing like huge pike most furiously 

 at the larger varieties, which sometimes jump to a great height 

 out of the water, in an attempt to evade their pursuers. 



When I was in command of the Khedive's expedition, our 

 losses through crocodiles were very distressing, all of which were 



