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kindly allowed me to see) some one has noted “ 200 ” for 
“three score” and “12” for “fifteen.” 
Sir Richard F. Burton, then a Lieutenant in the Bombay 
Army, must have been here about 1842. In his book, 
“ Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley,” 2nd Edition, 1851, Yol. I, 
page 50 (for seeing this rare book I am indebted to the 
otficials of the Royal Geographical Society, London), he 
writes : — 
“ The little bog before us, though not more than a hundred 
yards* down the centre, by half that breadth, contains hun- 
dreds of alligators of every size from two to twenty feet.” 
Mr. B. B. Woodward, of the British Museum (Natural 
History), has been so good as to call my attention to 
Burton’s later book, “ Sind Revisited,” which was published 
in 1877, and in which from pages 88 to 103 there are 
numerous references to Mugger Pir. And the legend of its 
origin is given, how Haji Mangho settled in this barren 
spot and prayed for thirteen years and then caused a rill to 
trickle from the rock, and how his four disciples also wrought 
miracles and thus made the oasis. Lai Shahbaz made the 
hot spring, Jimal el Din turned his tooth -brushing stick 
into a date palm, Jelal Jaymaya made the tree rain down 
honey and butter, and, what most concerns us, Farid el Din 
turned a flower into a crocodile ! 
But, turning from legend to history, we find that between 
the dates of Burton’s two visits the methods of keeping the 
crocodiles had changed. Formerly, as we know from 
Carless, they lived at liberty in a natural swamp, but as 
they used to stray, attack people, or steal children, and 
probably also owing to the increased value of land in the 
oasis, the swamp was drained and the crocodiles confined to 
a tank surrounded by a high wall. This evidently led to a 
great reduction in the number of the reptiles, as instead of 
the “ hundreds ” of his first visit. Burton puts the number 
at forty on his second visit, these being all big ones. He 
also mentions that “ Mor Sahib,” the big crocodile (said 
to have been eighteen feet long) referred to in several books, 
had died before his second visit. 
* In “ Sind Kevisited,” 1877, Vol. I, [). 97, Burton writes “ 100 feet.” 
