CROCODILES. 317 



its tail. About the same hour it may occasionally be heard 

 to emit a sort of hoarse bellow, as if calling to some com- 

 panion. Its extreme length has been already mentioned as 

 twenty-five or twenty-six feet, but such dimensions are sel- 

 dom attained, and the ordinary measurement of a large croco- 

 dile of this kind may be set down as eighteen to twenty only. 

 It is commonly said to live to a very great age, rivalling 

 those of the patriarchs of old, and to count more years than 

 my modest pen cares to record. 



I once was acquainted with an individual of this species 

 or variety, which for two years was the terror of the boat- 

 men and fishers who plied their callings on the waters haunted 

 by him. I write of this fearful creature as being of the 

 masculine gender, but failing to destroy him, notwithstanding 

 my best efforts to do so, I judge of this only by his huge size 

 and the great breadth of his head, and I calculate his length 

 to have been twenty-two to twenty -four feet. His caution 

 and cunning quite baffled me, and after destroying many men 

 during two successive rainy seasons, he disappeared to be 

 heard of no more. Mr. E. Chapman shot one of this kind 

 a notorious man-eater near Chandballee, on the Damrah, and 

 from its stomach took out pieces of gold, silver, copper, brass, 

 and zinc, weighing in all twenty-nine or thirty pounds (I 

 forget the exact weight), being the metals of which the orna- 

 ments of women were made, such being his most common 

 victims, who had been carried off while bathing or drawing 

 water at the river side. 



Sometimes boatmen plying their paddles at the stern of 

 their canoes are taken off, but such instances are rare. On 

 one occasion a servant of mine narrowly escaped from the jaws 

 of a particularly bold crocodile as he was stepping on board 

 my boat, moored close to the bank of a very narrow tidal 

 stream. On another occasion a boatman was seized close to 

 me and dragged into deep water before a hand could be 

 stretched out to help him ; and although I followed quickly 

 in a jolly-boat, with long poles to strike the reptile if I suc- 

 ceeded in overtaking him, and with a rifle in case he showed 



