the
crocodile, and destroyed him by suffocation, for he could neither
gorge nor eject it.

[Illustration: 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 WAS WIDE OPEN. THE HEAD OF THE ONE STUCK IN THE THROAT OF
THE OTHER, AND THEY WERE STRUGGLING TO EXTRICATE THEMSELVES.]

Soon after I had thus gained a complete victory over my two powerful
adversaries my companion arrived in search of me; for finding I did
not follow him into the wood, he returned, apprehending I had lost my
way or met with some accident.

After mutual congratulations, we measured the crocodile, which was
just forty feet in length.

As soon as we had related this extraordinary adventure to the
governor, he sent a wagon and servants, who brought home the two
carcasses. The lion's skin was properly preserved, with its hair on,
after which it was made into tobacco pouches, and presented by me,
upon our return to Holland, to the burgomasters, who, in return,
requested my acceptance of a thousand ducats.

The skin of the crocodile was stuffed in the usual manner, and makes a
capital article in their public museum at Amsterdam, where the
exhibitor relates the whole story to each spectator, with such
additions as he thinks proper. Some of his variations are rather
extravagant; one of them is that the crocodile turned about, snatched
the _couteau de chasse_ out of Monsieur's hand, and swallowed it with
such eagerness that it pierced his heart and killed him immediately!

The little regard which this impudent knave has to veracity makes me
sometimes apprehensive that my _real facts_ may fall under suspicion,
by being found in company with his inventions.

THE BARON'S JOURNEY TO ST. PETERSBURG

_By Rodolph Eric Raspe_

I set off from Rome on a journey to Russia, in the midst of winter,
from a just notion that frost and snow must of course mend the roads,
which every traveler had described as uncommonly bad through the
northern parts of Germany, Poland, Courland, and Livonia. I went on
horseback, as the most convenient manner of traveling; I was but
lightly clothed, and of this I felt the inconvenience the more I
advanced northeast. What must not a poor old man have suffered in that
severe weather and climate, whom I saw on a bleak common in Poland,