of the government agent’s residence, a hook having been laid the night before, baited with the entrails of a goat; and made fast, in the native fashion, by a bunch of fine cords, which the creature cannot gnaw asunder as it would a solid rope, since they sink into the spaces between its teeth.  The one taken was small, being only about ten or eleven feet in length, whereas they are frequently killed from fifteen to nineteen feet long.  As long as it was in the water, it made strong resistance to being hauled on shore, carrying the canoe out into the deep channel, and occasionally raising its head above the surface, and clashing its jaws together menacingly.  This action has a horrid sound, as the crocodile has no fleshy lips; and it brings its teeth and the bones of the mouth together with a loud crash, like the clank of two pieces of hard wood.  After playing it a little, the boatmen drew it to land, and when once fairly on the shore all courage and energy seemed utterly to desert it.  It tried once or twice to regain the water, but at last lay motionless and perfectly helpless on the sand.  It was no easy matter to kill it; a rifle ball sent diagonally through its breast had little or no effect, and even when the shot had been repeated more than once, it was as full of life as ever.[1] It feigned death and lay motionless, with its eye closed; but, on being pricked with a spear, it suddenly regained all its activity.  It was at last finished by a harpoon, and then opened.  Its maw contained several small tortoises, and a quantity of broken bricks and gravel, taken medicinally, to promote digestion.

[Footnote 1:  A remarkable instance of the vitality of the common crocodile, C. biporcatus, was related to me by a gentleman at Galle:  he had caught on a baited hook an unusually large one, which his coolies disembowelled, the aperture in the stomach being left expanded by a stick placed across it.  On returning in the afternoon with a view to secure the head, they found that the creature had crawled for some distance, and made its escape into the water.

“A curious incident occurred some years ago on the Maguruganga, a stream which flows through the Pasdun Corle, to join the Bentolle river.  A man was fishing seated on the branch of a tree that overhung the water; and to shelter himself from the drizzling rain, he covered his head and shoulder with a bag folded into a shape common with the natives.  While in this attitude, a leopard sprang upon him from the jungle, but missing its aim, seized the bag and not the man, and fell with it into the river.  Here a crocodile, which had been eyeing the angler is despair, seized the leopard as it fell, and sunk with it to the bottom.”—­Letter from GOONE-RATNE Modliar, interpreter of the Supreme Court, 10th Jany., 1861.]

During our journeys we had numerous opportunities of observing the habits of these hideous creatures, and I am far from considering them so formidable as they are usually supposed to be.  They are evidently not wantonly destructive; they act only under the influence of hunger, and even then their motions on land are awkward and ungainly, their action timid, and their whole demeanour devoid of the sagacity and courage which characterise other animals of prey.