THE EMYDOSAURES OR CROCODILES. Ill 



compressed, and armed, like the back, with very strong^ 

 upright plates, which form sharp ridges or crests in 

 their centre. With this weapon they can inflict terrific 

 wounds upon their enemies, while it enables them to 

 swim with rapidity. By a peculiarity, however, in the 

 vertebra of their neck, these monsters cannot turn 

 about with much facility; hence they are not difficult to 

 be avoided on those rare occasions when, upon quitting 

 their natural element, they pursue a man upon land. 

 The snout of the crocodiles and caymans is very broad, 

 unusually depressed ; the eye small, and the mouth 

 enormously large. 



(114.) Crocodiles and caymans have a different geo- 

 gi'aphic range : the first are inhabitants of the Old 

 World, the latter of the New ; but both are most abun- 

 dant in those latitudes which approach nearest to the 

 equinoctial line. The crocodiles of the Nile have fur- 

 nished much for the admiration of the credulous, and 

 much that is really interesting. It appears that they 

 formed one of the innumerable idols of the ancient 

 Egyptians, and that certain individuals, from being 

 caught when young, could be so tamed as to foUow in 

 the train of their religious processions. They are 

 particularly abundant in certain localities, and have 

 been sometimes killed of the length of thirty feet. .It 

 is only in the imagination of the painter, that combats 

 between these animals and the elephant, or rhinoceros, 

 have ever existed : the crocodile, in fact, is only dan- 

 gerous when in the water : upon land it is a slow-paced 

 and even timid animal, so that an active boy, armed with 

 a small hatchet, might easily despatch one : there is no 

 great prowess, therefore, required to ride on the back 

 of a poor cayman, after he has been secured, or perhaps 

 wounded ; and a m.odern writer might well have spared 

 the recital of his feats in this way upon the caym.ans of 

 Guiana, had he not been influenced in this, and number- 

 less other instances, by the greatest possible love for 

 the marvellous, and a constant propensity to dress truth 

 in the garb of fiction. In Egypt, as v/ell as in the 



