cuir.xi. SUPERSTITIOUS FEAR OF THE CROCODILE. 207 



saw a crocodile dive into the water with his poor dog in its 

 jaws. The natives regard them with strange feelings. They 

 fear them as possessed of supernatural power, invoke their 

 forbearance with prayers, or seek protection by charms, rather 

 than attack them; even the shaking of a spear over the waters 

 would be regarded as an act of sacrilegious insult to the 

 sovereign of the flood, imperilling the life of the offender 

 the next time he should venture on the water. Crocodiles' 

 teeth are worn as charms ; they are also made of silver or gold 

 and worn both for security and ornament ; a golden crocodile's 

 tooth being the central ornament in the sovereign's crown. 

 Yet, notwithstanding this dread of the crocodile, the natives 

 destroy the young ones, and collect the eggs, which they boil, 

 and dry in the sim, and then preserve in sacks for food or sale. 

 The eggs are large, being long rather than oval, and are 

 obtained in great numbers. A missionary voyaging along 

 the lakes we had just left, at the season when the natives 

 on their shores were preserving the eggs, found that one 

 single family had collected 500 eggs. The male croco- 

 diles are said to prey upon the young ones, and great 

 numbers of their eggs are destroyed by serpents and cer- 

 tain kinds of birds; but, notwithstanding these and other 

 restrictions upon their increase, their numbers are alarm- 

 ing and dangerous. The crocodile is described as exceed- 

 ingly timid, fleeing from noise or the violent agitation of 

 the water ; but, in an extremely interesting -written account 

 which I received of the flight of a party of native Christians 

 across the northern part of the island, I met, among details 

 of their perils in the wilderness, with notices of the crocodile 

 which at first appeared to me scarcely credible. In describing 

 a part of the journey the writer observes : — 



" We then entered a thicket or wood of small bamboos, 

 where in many places there was water up to the knees, and 

 there were many crocodiles in the water. We were nine 



