I have known
it eaten by certain classes in India. (J.R.G.S. XXX. 193.)
The term serpent is applied by many old writers to crocodiles and the
like, e.g. by Odoric, and perhaps allusively by Shakspeare ("Where's my
Serpent of Old Nile?"). Mr. Fergusson tells me he was once much struck
with the snake-like motion of a group of crocodiles hastily descending
to the water from a high sand-bank, without apparent use of the limbs,
when surprised by the approach of a boat.[2]
Matthioli says the gall of the crocodile surpasses all medicines for the
removal of pustules and the like from the eyes. Vincent of Beauvais
mentions the same, besides many other medical uses of the reptile's
carcass, including a very unsavoury cosmetic. (Matt. p. 245; Spec.
Natur. Lib. XVII. c. 106, 108.)
["According to Chinese notions, Han Yue, the St. Patrick of China, having
persuaded the alligators in China that he was all-powerful, induced the
stupid saurians to migrate to Ngo Hu or 'Alligators' Lake' in the
Kwang-tung province." (North-China Herald, 5th July, 1895, p. 5.)
Alligators have been found in 1878 at Wu-hu and at Chen-kiang (Ngan-hwei
and Kiang-Su). (See A. A. Fauvel, Alligators in China, in Jour. N.
China B.R.A.S. XIII. 1879, 1-36.) - H.C.]
NOTE 4. - I think the great horses must be an error, though running
through all the texts, and that grant quantite de chevaus was probably
intended. Valuable ponies are produced in those regions, but I have
never heard of large horses, and Martini's testimony is to like effect (p.
141). Nor can I hear of any race in those regions in modern times that
uses what we should call long stirrups. It is true that the Tartars rode
very short - "brevissimas habent strepas," as Carpini says (643); and the
Kirghiz Kazaks now do the same. Both Burmese and Shans ride what we should
call short; and Major Sladen observes of the people on the western border
of Yun-nan: "Kachyens and Shans ride on ordinary Chinese saddles. The
stirrups are of the usual average length, but the saddles are so
constructed as to rise at least a foot above the pony's back." He adds
with reference to another point in the text: "I noticed a few Shan ponies
with docked tails. But the more general practice is to loop up the tail
in a knot, the object being to protect the rider, or rather his clothes,
from the dirt with which they would otherwise be spattered from the
flipping of the animal's tail." (MS.
