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The eastern staple rises at first sheer from the water's edge to the estimated altitude of a thousand feet, this is the "Crocodile's Head" which we saw on the last march, and already the thin rains are robing its rocky surface with tender green. The strata are disposed at angles, varying from 35deg. to 45deg., and three streaks of bright trees denote Fiumaras about to be filled.
"The next scene represented a forest. Wotan was waking up the dragon. At first the dragon said, 'I want to go to sleep'; but eventually he came out of his grotto. The dragon was represented by two men clothed in a green skin with some scales stuck about it. At one end of the skin they wagged a tail, and at the other end they opened a crocodile's mouth, out of which came fire.
Similarly among the Sakalavas of southern Madagascar a vertebra of the neck, a nail, and a lock of hair of a deceased king are placed in a crocodile's tooth and carefully kept along with the similar relics of his predecessors in a house set apart for the purpose. The possession of these relics constitutes the right to the throne.
Their arms are made of wood, without any iron point; but some instead thereof use a crocodile's tooth. They have no bows nor arrows, as the other Indians have, but their common weapon is a sort of lance a fathom and a half long. Here are many plantations surrounded with woods, whence they gather abundance of fruits, as potatoes, bananas, racoven, ananas, and many others.
I lay some time in a situation which no language can describe, expecting to feel his teeth or talons in some part of me every moment; after waiting in this prostrate situation a few seconds I heard a violent but unusual noise, different from any sound that had ever before assailed my ears; nor is it at all to be wondered at, when I inform you from whence it proceeded: after listening for some time, I ventured to raise my head and look round, when, to my unspeakable joy, I perceived the lion had, by the eagerness with which he sprung at me, jumped forward, as I fell, into the crocodile's mouth! which, as before observed, was wide open; the head of the one stuck in the throat of the other! and they were struggling to extricate themselves!
There was no need for it for his claws had rent into ribbons the less tough hide of the crocodile's throat. Painful though this injury must have been it was not enough to deter the villainous reptile from its purpose. On the contrary, it seemed to increase its speed.
To do this, however, with your permission, I must walk over on your backs to the other side, so please be so good as not to move, or else I shall fall into the sea and be drowned!" So the hare hopped off the island on to the strange bridge of crocodiles, counting as he jumped from one crocodile's back to the other: "Please keep quite still, or I shall not be able to count.
"And so I say still, he has given wonderful proof of it to-day. Merely for the sake of being released from his oath, he thrust his head into the crocodile's jaws. But though the son of Nun is a lion, he will find his master in Mesu. That man is the mortal foe of the Egyptians, the bare thought of him stirs my gall."
The pain, no doubt, caused him to weep "crocodile's tears," though none were seen, but his eyes glared with a lurid light, and he began to look around for some means of escape from his painful position. His eye fell upon the water. That promised something, although he knew full well the turtle was as much at home there as he.
This was the impression one got of him as he looked out of his stern blue eyes, superior to men and circumstances." I said I had expected to hear of a man of softer mood, more sympathetic and less taciturn. Carlyle said, "No, not at all; he was a man quite other than that; a man of an immense head and great jaws like a crocodile's, cast in a mold designed for prodigious work."
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