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But they have another superstitious opinion that is still more unaccountable. They believe that women, when they are delivered of children, are frequently at the same time delivered of a young crocodile, as a twin to the infant: they believe that these creatures are received most carefully by the midwife, and immediately carried down to the river, and put into the water. The family in which such a birth is supposed to have happened, constantly put victuals into the river for their amphibious relation, and especially the twin, who, as long as he lives, goes down to the river at stated seasons, to fulfil this fraternal duty, for the neglect of which it is the universal opinion that he will be visited with sickness or death. What could at first produce a notion so extravagant and absurd, it is not easy to guess, especially as it seems to be totally unconnected with any religious mystery, and how a fact which never happened, should be pretended to happen every day, by those who cannot be deceived into a belief of it by appearances, nor have any apparent interest in the fraud, is a problem still more difficult to solve. Nothing however can be more certain than the firm belief of this strange absurdity among them, for we had the concurrent testimony of every Indian who was questioned about it, in its favour. It seems to have taken its rise in the islands of Celebes and Boutou, where many of the inhabitants keep crocodiles in their families; but however that be, the opinion has spread over all the eastern islands, even to Timor and Ceram, and westward as far as Java and Sumatra, where, however, young crocodiles are, I believe, never kept.
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© Derived from Vols. II-III of the London 1773 edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, pages 756 - 757, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
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