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 waggon and servants, who brought home the two carcases. 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 lion jumped quite through the crocodile, and was
making his escape at the back door, when, as soon as his head appeared,
Monsieur the Great Baron (as he is pleased to call me) cut it off,
and three feet of the crocodile's tail along with it; nay, so little
attention has this fellow to the truth, that he sometimes adds, as soon
as the crocodile missed his tail, he 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 confounded inventions.

CHAPTER II

_In which the Baron proves himself a good shot--He loses his horse,
and finds a wolf--Makes him draw his sledge--Promises to entertain
his company with a relation of such facts as are well deserving their
notice._

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 traveller 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 travelling; I was but lightly clothed, and
of this I felt the inconvenience the more I advanced north-east.
What must not a poor old man have suffered in that severe weat