Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/403

] its substance. This serpent was but of a middling size, being only twelve feet in length; but a few days afterwards the natives killed one at a small distance from this place, which measured forty feet. It appeared that this animal did not use to prey upon fowls; for they found in his stomach a kid that weighed thirty pounds.

The river that runs at the foot of Fort Anké is frequented by alligators. One day I saw a very large one advance towards a company of boys who were swimming in the river. He immediately seized one of them and disappeared under the water: nevertheless, a few days after another company of boys came to bathe in the same place.

During the last months of our stay at Anké, four officers of the French privateer Le Modeste were confined in the same fortress, and alleviated the tediousness of our captivity by their company. They had been made prisoners of war on board of a Dutch vessel, shortly after they had made prize of her.

The Major of the place, who visited us very frequently, informed us of the death of Giradrin, purser to the Recherche, who was discovered to be a woman, as we had suspected from the beginning of the voyage. An impulse of curiosity seems to have been her principal motive for em-