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293 VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. cnAP. si. days in that wood, and had nothing to eat hut clay and water. It was all water or marshy ground, and we found no place to lie down and sleep on, except when we came to a tree, or a piece of ground somewhat raised and dry. We frequently came upon crocodiles, sometimes trod upon them, and when we laid down at night we smelt them (near us).” Three of the fugitives were present when I first read their narrative, and on my pausing and expressing my wonder, asking if they really did tread on the reptiles, and inquiring how they ever escaped, they said, when the crocodile was in the water, or saw its prey before it, it was ferocious and irre sistible, but when they trod upon it in the swamp, it seemed greatly frightened, and instead of attacking them, seemed to try to get away, or to penetrate deeper into the mud. The writer of the account continues: “We did not expect to live, or ever to see men again, for we thought we should die in that swamp. But after nine days we came to an open country, and when we had proceeded a short distance, we came to a place where there were great numbers of water lilies growing. We gathered and ate the leaves of the lilies, and remained five days in the place where we found this food. When we went on again we soon came to a broad river, where we stopped two days, and cut a large quantity of long coarse grass, which we tied in a bundle, to serve the purpose of a raft; we also made a rope of long grass with which to draw the raft across the river. Then I swam with one end of the rope to the other side of the river. My wife and a woman pushed the bundle of grass into the water, placed their bundles and the little child on the top of the raft of grass, and I pulled it across, while the women swam one on each side of the bundle to keep it upright, and so all reached the shore safely, though the stream was rapid, and there were numbers of crocodiles in the river.” But to continue the narrative of my own journey. Soon