42 WANDERINGS OF A 



Emerging from a defile which leads through a low range 

 of hills, the traveller enters on a desert waste, stretching 

 westward towards the mountains of Beloochistan. In the far 

 distance two oases are visible, whose date and cocoa-nut 

 trees are refreshing to the sight after eight miles of the most 

 monotonous scenery. In the vicinity of the nearest grove is 

 an ancient burial-ground, where may be observed several 

 curiously-carved gravestones. 



I visited the crocodiles {Crocodilus paliistris) on two occa- 

 sions at an interval of several years, and although during that 

 time they had been seen by hundreds of Europeans, including 

 a certain class of mischievous young Englishmen (whose chief 

 amusement, we were told, had been to shy stones and sticks 

 down the throats of the gaping monsters as they lay basking 

 on the banks of the pond), yet there seemed no diminution in 

 their numbers, and the wild and unearthly interest of the 

 scene was to us as great as ever. From beneath a little 

 banyan-tree on the verge of the pond, the spectacle, during 

 the steaming heat of a mid-day sun, might call up to the 

 mind of the geologist the eons of the world, when the " great 

 monsters " wallowed in the seething waters of the Oolitic 

 ages, when the mighty " Ichthyosaurus," and a host of " fear- 

 fully great lizards," dragons, etc., reigned supreme over sea 

 and land. And as the date-palm now waves its shady boughs 

 over the crocodiles of Mugger-peer, so then did the magnificent 

 tree-ferns, gigantic reeds, and club-mosses, shelter their ex- 

 tinct predecessors. 



The greater pond is about 300 yards in circumference, and 

 contains many little grassy islands, on which the majority of 

 the crocodiles were then basking ; some were asleep on its slimy 

 sides, others half-submerged in the muddy water, while now 

 and then a huge monster would raise himself upon his diminu- 



