chap. xi. SUPERSTITIOUS EEAR OF THE CROCODILE. 
297 
jaws. The natives regard them with strange feelings. They 
fear them as possessed of supernatural power, invoke their 
forbearance with prayers, or seek protection by charms, rather 
than attack them; even the shaking of a spear over the waters 
would be regarded as an act of sacrilegious insult to the 
sovereign of the flood, imperilling the life of the offender 
the next time he should venture on the water. Crocodiles’ 
teeth are worn as charms; they are also made of silver or gold 
and worn both for security and ornament; a golden crocodile’s 
tooth being the central ornament in the sovereign’s crown. 
Yet, notwithstanding this dread of the crocodile, the natives 
destroy the young ones, and collect the eggs, which they boil, 
and dry in the sun, and then preserve in sacks for food or sale. 
The eggs are large, being long rather than oval, and are 
obtained in great numbers. A missionary voyaging along 
the lakes we had just left, at the season when the natives 
on their shores were preserving the eggs, found that one 
single family had collected 500 eggs. The male croco¬ 
diles are said to prey upon the young ones, and great 
numbers of their eggs are destroyed by serpents and cer¬ 
tain kinds of birds; but, notwithstanding these and other 
restrictions upon their increase, their numbers are alarm¬ 
ing and dangerous. The crocodile is described as exceed¬ 
ingly timid, fleeing from noise or the violent agitation of 
the water; but, in an extrepnely interesting written account 
which I received of the flight of a party of native Christians 
across the northern part of the island, I met, among details 
of their perils in the wilderness, with notices of the crocodile 
which at first appeared to me scarcely credible. In describing 
a part of the journey the writer observes : — 
“ We then entered a thicket or wood of small bamboos, 
where in many places there was water up to the knees, and 
there were many crocodiles in the water. We were nine 
days in that wood, and had nothing to eat but clay and water. 
