Chap. IX.] 
CROCODILES. 
287 
tially cowardly in its instincts, and hastens to conceal 
itself on the appearance of man. A gentleman (who told 
me the circumstance), when riding in the jungle, over- 
took a crocodile, evidently roaming in search of water. 
It fled to a shallow pool almost dried by the sun, and, 
thrusting its head into the mud till it covered up its 
eyes, remained unmoved in profound confidence of per- 
fect concealment. In 1833, during the progress of the 
Pearl Fishery, Sir Eobert Wilmot Horton employed 
men to drag for crocodiles in a pond which was infested 
by them in the immediate vicinity of Aripo. The 
pool was about fifty yards in length, by ten or twelve 
wide, shallowing gradually to the edge, and not ex- 
ceeding four or five feet at the deepest part. As the 
party approached the bund, from twenty to thirty 
reptiles, which had been basking in the sun, rose and 
fled to the water. A net, specially weighted so as to 
sink its lower edge to the bottom, was then stretched 
from bank to bank and swept to the further end of the 
pond, followed by a line of men with poles to drive the 
crocodiles forward : so complete was the arrangement, 
that no individual could have evaded the net, yet, to the 
astonishment of the Governor's party, not one was to be 
found when it was drawn on shore, and no means of 
escape for them was apparent or possible except by their 
descending into the mud at the bottom of the pond. 
The lagoon of Batticaloa, and indeed all the still 
waters of this district, are remarkable for the numbers 
and prodigious size of the crocodiles which infest them. 
Their teeth are sometimes so large that the natives 
mount them with silver lids and use them for boxes to 
carry the powdered chunam, which they chew with the 
betel leaf. During one of my visits to the lake a crocodile 
was caught within a few yards of the government agent's 
