2-981-803 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Royal Visit to India: the Ganges, from a sketch by one of our special artists, 1876. The mugger crocodile (Crocodylus palustris). 'The Ganges, like the Nile, rises and falls; at one season, when it is high, it is in some parts a very wide stream, and in the winter again it contracts, leaving sandbanks, which the "muggers," or alligators, come out and repose upon. Many lives are annually lost in India from the alligators carrying off the people as they come daily to perform in the sacred Gunga the necessary ceremonies commanded by their religion. Europeans always bathe in their houses, so they are not liable to accidents of this kind, still they are not altogether exempt. Dr. Cotton, who was Bishop of Calcutta, fell out of his boat into the river one night, about ten years ago, and, as the body never was again seen, it is supposed that one of the muggers had caught him'. From "Illustrated London News", 1876.