SPORT IN MOZAMBIQUE 



small antelopes, I should have returned in a bad 

 humour from this trip. 



The evening that I returned to Guengere, a young 

 negress was brought in, whose parents besought me 

 to treat her. The poor thing had been seized by a 

 crocodile a fortnight ago while she was bathing in the 

 Pungwe. By good luck her cries were heard ; her 

 parents rushed to her assistance and dragged her 

 from the huge reptile at the moment when, lying upon 

 her with all its weight, it was trying to drown her. 

 Treated in Kafir fashion, with powerful cicatrising 

 drugs, the wound, which contained scales of bone 

 splintered off by the teeth, without there being a 

 fracture, closed itself too quickly, enclosing intense 

 suppuration. The knee presented a voluminous 

 phlegmon ; the child was in a burning fever. I 

 endeavoured at first to diminish the temperature ; 

 afterwards, on the morrow, I opened the phlegmon. 

 After a severe treatment, which lasted forty days, 

 the poor child, Niaw, was able to get up and walk. 

 There remained of the accident only a slight lameness. 

 This adventure, which is of a common type, leads me 

 to say a word about the atrocious crocodile. It is 

 one of the greatest pests of Africa. It is, above all, 

 invisible when watching its prey. On a sudden it 

 launches itself on the imprudent victim, seizes it and 

 carries it off, drowns it, and immediately after conceals 

 the body in a hole in the bank, to which it comes to 

 feast when the flesh is putrescent. 



(96) 



