312 CROCODILES — THEIR EGGS. Chap. XI. 



They are hunted with spears, and spring traps are set for 

 them. If one of them enters an inviting pool after fish, 

 he soon finds a fence thrown ronnd it, and a spring trap 

 set in the only path out of the enclosure. Their flesh is 

 eaten, and relished. The banks,, on which the female lays 

 her eggs by night, are carefully searched by day, and all 

 the eggs dug out and devoured. The fish-hawk makes 

 havoc among the few young ones that escape their other 

 enemies. Our men were constantly on the look-out for 

 crocodiles' nests. One was found containing thirty-five 

 newly-laid eggs, and they declared that the crocodile 

 would lay as many more the second night in another 

 place. The eggs were a foot deep in the sand on the top 

 of a bank ten feet high. The animal digs a hole with its 

 foot, covers the eggs, and leaves them till the river rises 

 over the nest in about three months afterwards, when she 

 comes back, and assists the young ones out. We once saw 

 opposite Tette young crocodiles in December, swimming 

 beside an island in company with an old one. The yolk 

 of the egg is nearly as white as the real white. In taste 

 they resemble hen's eggs with perhaps a smack of custard, 

 and would be as highly relished by whites as by blacks, 

 were it not for their unsavoury origin in men-eaters. 



Hunting the Senze (Aulacodus Swindernianus), an 

 animal the size of a large cat, but in shape more like a 

 pig, was the chief business of men and boys as we passed 

 the reedy banks and low islands. They set fire to a mass 

 of reeds, and, armed with sticks, spears, bows and arrows, 

 stand in groups guarding the outlets through which the 

 scared Senze may run from the approaching flames. Dark 

 dense volumes of impenetrable smoke now roll over on 

 the lee side of the islet, and shroud the hunters. At 

 times vast sheets of lurid flames bursting forth, roaring, 

 crackling and exploding, leap wildly far above the tall 

 reeds. Out rush the terrified animals, and amid the smoke 



