William Furlsbury Carter Mission Part 6

Calcutta is on the Hoogli River. I traveled this river south to where it met the Ganges River on a steamer boat. My 2nd great granddaughter Jane Carter - daughter of Tommy Lavan and Kathryn Carter - traveled on it in Calcutta when she was there. When she asked the guide where the crocodiles where, He answered that there were no crocodiles. She said that there were in my time as I wrote about them and then she showed him the entries in my journal. Here is what I wrote:

William's Journal

Saturday, May 21, 1853: At 8 a.m. our attention was called to witness a singular sight. Our attention was excited by three or four hundred natives on the shore, howling and screaming. They gave us to understand that an alligator had caught a man; they pointed up the river. We looked and about one-quarter of a mile from us we saw the monster with the man. The alligator was about 20 feet in length; me made for him as fast as possible. He went down with the man and just before we get to him, arose without the man. Close to us, he went down and we saw no more of him. Soon after we passed, the man arose, but was dead. There was a man carried off in the same place yesterday.

The natives have a place built of bamboo by the shore, where they go to bathe; and this place had got broken away, so the alligator got in and caught the men. There is any amount of alligators and crocodiles in this river. The crocodiles will take an ox and use him up directly.
Fellow Missionaries

Abandoned dock on Hoogli River in modern Calcutta

Natives washing clothes today on banks of Hoogli River in Calcutta

River Boats like those William would have seen