288 
REPTILES. 
[Chap. IX. 
residence, a hook having been laid the night before, 
baited with the entrails of a goat ; and made fast, in the 
native fashion, by a bunch of fine cords, which the 
creature cannot gnaw asunder as it would a solid rope, 
since they sink into the spaces between its teeth. The 
one taken was small, being only about ten or eleven 
feet in length, whereas they are frequently killed from 
fifteen to nineteen feet long. As long as it was in the 
water, it made strong resistance to being hauled on 
shore, carrying the canoe out into the deep channel, 
and occasionally raising its head above the surface, and 
clashing its jaws together menacingly. This action has 
a horrid sound, as the crocodile has no fleshy lips, and 
it brings its teeth and the bones of the mouth together 
with a loud crash, like the clank of two pieces of hard 
wood. After playing it a little, the boatmen drew it to 
land, and when once fairly on the shore all courage and 
energy seemed utterly to desert it. It tried once or 
twice to regain the water, but at last lay motionless and 
perfectly helpless on the sand. It was no easy matter 
to kill it ; a rifle ball sent diagonally through its breast 
had little or no effect, and even when the shot had been 
repeated more than once, it was as full of life as ever. 1 It 
1 A remarkable instance of the ganga, a stream which flows through 
vitality of the common crocodile, the Pasdun Corle, to join the Ben- 
C. biporcatus, was related to me tolle river. A man was fishing 
hy a gentleman at Galle : he had seated on the branch of a tree that 
caught on a baited hook an un- overhung the water ; and to shelter 
usually large one, which his coolies himself from the drizzling rain, he 
disembowelled, the aperture in the covered his head and shoulders 
stomach being left expanded by a with a bag folded into a shape 
stick placed across it. On return- common with the natives. While 
ing in the afternoon with a view to in this attitude, a leopard sprung- 
secure the head, they found that upon him from the jungle, but, 
the creature had crawled for some missing its aim, seized the bag and 
distance, and made its escape into not the man, and fell with it into 
the water. the river. Here a crocodile, which 
" A curious incident occurred had been eyeing the angler in 
some years ago on the Maguru- despair, seized the leopard as it 
