In the summer of 1846, when every body in England was crazy with railway gambling, I was sojourning on the banks of the Rohan, a small stream in one of the northwestern provinces of India. Here I first became acquainted, with the Mugger, or Indian crocodile. I had often before leaving England, seen, in museums, stuffed specimens of the animal, and had read in "Voyages and Travels," all sorts of horrible and incredible stories concerning them. I had a lively recollection of Waterton riding close to the water's edge on the back of an American cayman, and I had a confused notion of sacred crocodiles on the banks of the Nile. I always felt more or less inclined to regard the whole race as having affinities with Sinbad's "roc," and the wild men of the woods, who only refrained from speaking for fear of being made to work. My ideas respecting the natural history of crocodiles were in this stage of development when, one day, while paddling up the Rohan, I saw what appeared to be a half-burned log of wood lying on a sand-bank. I paddled close up to it. To my astonishment, it proved to be a huge reptile. The old stories of dragons, griffins, and monsters, seemed no longer fables; the speculations of geologists concerning, _mososaurians, hylæsaurians,_ and _plesiosaurians_, were no longer dreams. There, in all his scaly magnificence, was a _real_ saurian, nearly eighteen feet long. For a while I stood gazing at this, to me, new fellow-citizen of the world, and speculating on his mental constitution. The monster was, or pretended to be, asleep. I wondered if he dreamt, and what his dreams or reveries might be about; possibly he was dreaming of the same old world with which I associated him--possibly of the fish who were swimming in the waters below: or, he might be thinking of the men and women he had swallowed in the course of his existence. There was a snort; perhaps that was occasioned by the bugles and heavy brass ornaments which had adorned the limbs of some Hindoo beauty he had eaten, and which were lying heavy and indigestible on his stomach. But presently the brute lay so still, and seemed so tranquil and placid in his sleep, that it was difficult to imagine him guilty of such atrocities. He did not appear to be disturbed by remorse, or the twitchings of a guilty conscience: it may have been all a slander. I felt so kindly disposed toward him, that I could not imagine it possible that if awake he would feel disposed to eat me. Let us see! so making a splash with my paddle, I wakened the sleeping beauty. He instantly started up, and opened, what appeared--what indeed proved to be--an enlarged man-trap; disclosing a red, slimy cavern within, fringed with great conical fangs. He closed it with a snap that made me shudder, and then plunged into the water, his eyes glaring with hate and defiance.