on the subject of wild animals, I may mention a leopard that was
kept by an English officer in Samarang, during our occupation of the
Dutch colonies. This animal had its liberty, and used to run all over
the house after its master. One morning, after breakfast, the officer
was sitting smoking his hookah, with a book in his right-hand, and the
hookah-snake in his left, when he felt a slight pain in the left hand,
and, on attempting to raise it, was checked by a low angry growl from
his pet leopard: on looking down, he saw the animal had been licking the
back of his hand, and had by degrees drawn a little blood. The leopard
would not suffer the removal of the hand, but continued licking it with
great apparent relish, which did not much please his master; who, with
great presence of mind, without attempting again to disturb the pet in
his proceeding, called to his servant to bring him a pistol, with which
he shot the animal dead on the spot. Such pets as snakes nineteen feet
long and full-grown leopards are not to be trifled with. The largest
snake I ever saw was twenty-five feet long, and eight inches in
diameter. I have _heard_ of sixty-feet snakes, but cannot vouch for the
truth of the tale.

In my enumeration of animals dangerous to man, I omitted the alligator,
which infests every river and muddy creek in Java, and grows to a very
large size. At the mouth of the Batavia river, they are very numerous
and dangerous, particularly to Europeans. It strikes one as
extraordinary, to see the copper-coloured natives bathing in the river
within view of a large alligator: they never seem to give the animal a
thought, or to anticipate injury from his proximity. Yet, were a
European to enter the water by the side of the natives, his minutes in
this world would be few. I recollect an instance that occurred on the
occasion of a party of troops embarking at Batavia for the eastward,
during the Java war. The men had all gone off, with the exception of
three sergeants, who were to follow in the ship's jolly-boat, which was
waiting for them at the wharf: two of them stepped into the boat; but
the third, in following, missed his footing, and fell with his leg in
the water, and his body over the gunwale of the boat. In less than an
instant, an alligator darted from under the wharf, and seized the
unfortunate man by the leg, while his companions in the boat laid hold
of his shoulders. The poor fellow called out to his friends, "Pull; hold