chap. xi. SUPERSTITIOUS PEAR OP THE CROCODILE. 297 saw a crocodile dive into the water with his poor dog in its 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 extremely 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
