286 CROCODILES. 



Egyptian troops, that is to say, before tlie horrors 

 committed by the defterd&h* the crocodiles showed 

 but little taste for human flesh, but since the drown- 

 ings ordered by Mehemet Bey, said the man whom 

 I interrogated, since the Nile has borne the corpses 

 of my brethren, the monsters which inhabit it have 

 become accustomed to a substantial food, which they 

 scarcely knew before, and now we are exposed to 

 imminent danger from swimming in the river, or even 

 from bathing on its shores." 



This defterdah, or governor of Soudan, more fero- 

 cious, says Mr. Combes, than the tigers and lions with 

 which he loved to surround himself, made sport of 

 the lives of his fellow-men. To cut off the ears of the 

 conquered, and to burn out their eyes with a red-hot 

 iron, were his recreations. Empalement was in con- 

 stant operation, and the negroes were thrown to the 

 crocodiles in the Nile. There was only wanting to this 

 atrocious man the means of exercising his power on 

 a wider field to have nothing to envy in the celebrity 

 of the most famous successors of CaBsar. Mehemet Ali 

 recalled him at last, but the crocodiles had formed 

 habits which they could not lose in a day, and which, 



* Mehemet Bey is here referred to ; he had been governor of 

 the Soudan some time before the journey of Mr, Combes. 



