h 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 the 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.

II

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, lying on the road,
helpless, shivering and hardly having wherewithal to cover his
nakedness? I pitied the poor soul: though I felt the severity of the air
myself, I threw my mantle over him, and immediately I heard a voice from
the heavens blessing me for that piece of charity, saying, "You will be
rewarded, my son, for this in time."

I went on: night and darkness overtook me. No village was to be seen.
The country was covered with snow, and I was unacquainted with the road.

Tired, I alighted and fastened my horse to something like a pointed
stump of a tree, which appeared above the snow; for the sake of safety I
placed my pistols under my arm, and lay down on the snow, where I slept
so soundly that I did not open my eyes till full daylight. It is not
easy to conceive my astonishment to find myself in the midst of a
village, lying in a churchyard; nor was my horse to be seen, but I heard
him soon after neigh somewhere above me. On looking upwards I beheld him
hanging by his bridle to the weathercock of the steeple. Matters were
now very plain to me: the village had been covered with snow over night;
a sudden change of weather had taken place; I had sunk down to the
churc