ADVENTURES WITH CROCODILES 83 



of some sort, " did you not shoot it ? " " Ah well, we 

 have very little powder, and it is very expensive, and we 

 are poor and require all we have to kill game," was the 

 surprising, though characteristic answer. It is sometimes 

 difficult for a European even to begin to understand the 

 workings of the African mind. 



Although a large crocodile, having found a suitable 

 pool well stocked with fish, often remains therein, if not 

 permanently, at least for a considerable period, never- 

 theless during the rainy season especially, much changing 

 of quarters goes on, and the fact that a pool has been 

 untenanted through one dry season is no criterion that 

 it will be so at the beginning of the following one. When 

 a large crocodile is killed in a pool which he has kept as 

 his own special preserve, it is seldom long before another 

 one, of perhaps slightly smaller size, arrives to take his 

 place. During a heavy flood of the Sabi, I saw a large 

 crocodile being carried down in mid stream at the rate 

 of some five miles an hour. His tail serving him as a 

 rudder, he was keeping his head straight down stream, 

 and making no effort to steer towards the bank. It 

 looked as if he was taking advantage of the flood to effect 

 an easy change of residence. 



By night these reptiles often travel great distances 

 overland, but daylight invariably finds them safe in their 

 natural element. At a distance from the latter they are 

 timid, and make for it on the first alarm. I have heard 

 but one reliable story of any disposition to aggressiveness 

 when far away from water, and this may have been 

 due to fear rather than ferocity. A white man was 

 walking along a footpath by night, preceded by a native 

 boy of some twelve years old, when in the darkness the 

 latter stumbled over a crocodile which was apparently 

 moving along the path in the opposite direction. It 



