An Indigestible Meal. 
305 
The impression left on the mind of the reader is, that the 
crocodile has no hind legs at all. Perhaps the illustrious 
traveller’s courage did not hold out long enough to enable 
him to wait till the animal had emerged sufficiently out 
of the water to ascertain the proper number of its limbs. 
The American crocodile, or alligator, is mentioned by 
Sir Walter Ealeigh, in his account of Guiana, under its 
native name, el lagarto , the big lizard :— 
“ Upon this river [the Great Aman] there were great store of fowl, 
and of many sorts: we saw in it divers sorts of strange fishes, and of 
marvellous bigness; but for lagartos it exceeded; for there were 
thousands of those ugly serpents, and the people call it for the abun¬ 
dance of them the river of Lagartos, in their language. I had a negro, 
a very proper young fellow, that, leaping out of the galley to swim in 
the mouth of this river, was in all our sights taken and devoured with 
one of these legartos.” ( Sir W. Raleigh’s Works, vol. viii. p. 42.) 
Lopes, a Portuguese traveller, in Africa, gives the 
crocodile another name: “ In this river Jaire (in Congo), 
there are divers kinds of creatures, and namely, mightie 
great crocodiles, which the country people there call 
caiman ” (Purchas , vol. ii. p. 990). Andrew Battell, a 
traveller in Angola, records an astonishing feat of 
rapacity, and its consequence :— 
“ One crocodile was so huge and greedy, that he devoured an 
alibamha, that is, a chained company of eight or nine slaves: but the 
indigestible iron paid him his wage, and murthered the murtherer, 
found after in his belly.” {Purchas, vol. ii. p. 985.) 
Tom Coryat, the celebrated pedestrian traveller, gives 
an account of a visit paid by him to the church and 
monastery of some rich Benedictine monks at (Padua, 
about the year 1608. He describes the monastery as very 
extensive, occupying, with its gardens, the space of a mile 
in compass. His account of the dispensary attached to 
the building recalls the humbler dwelling of the poor 
Mantuan vendor of drugs :— 
“ Also I saw two goodly faire rooms within the monastery 
X 
