Tanks and _jeels_ are, in almost every part of India, full of rushes, and of the conferva, which, together with duck-weed, docks, &c., both cover the surface and fill up the deeps. They are, generally, replete with small fishes of various descriptions, and if of any extent, or deep, either harbour, or serve as visiting places for alligators, which infest both the running and the stagnant waters in every part of the country. These voracious animals travel at night from one _jeel_, or tank, to another; often announcing their presence by snapping up some poor unsuspecting Hindu, who wades up to his middle for the purpose of performing his ablutions, and of offering up the customary prayers on such occasions.
In many tanks, alligators are known to exist in numbers; nay, in some places, they are subsisted by the eleemosynary donations of travellers, who disburse a trifle in money, or present some provision to a _faqueer_, (or mendicant priest,) to provide food for the alligators, which come forth from the waters, on hearing the well-known voice of their holy purveyor; from whom they seldom fail to receive each a small cake of meal, or some other provision. This liberality does not, however, occasion any qualmish scruples of gratitude; it being found, that alligators thus handsomely treated are not a whit more reserved in the application of their teeth to bathers, &c., than those which have never been honored by such liberal consideration.
The respiration and effluvia proceeding from an animal, perhaps twenty, or twenty-five, feet in length, and from six to twelve in circumference, must have an effect upon even a large body of water. Allowing that such a monster should consume as much air as ten men, which, surely, is not an unfair calculation, and that twenty gallons of water contain one of air; as a man, on an average, consumes one gallon of air in a minute, the alligator must consume twelve hundred gallons, equal to near twenty hogsheads, in an hour: in twenty-four hours, the quantity of water contaminated by one alligator would amount to four hundred and eighty hogsheads!
From this, we may conceive the effect produced by the presence of, perhaps, seven or eight alligators in a tank not exceeding two acres in measurement, and no where above twelve or fourteen feet in depth: we must likewise take into the account abundance of fishes; for, if that abundance did not exist, the alligators would speedily decamp. Add to these two sufficient drawbacks, all that has been said of the impurities added by the inhabitants, and we shall form such a nauseating and unwholesome combination as must cause us to wonder how ever one should be left to tell the fate of his lost friends.