THE story of East Lancashire's very own Indiana Jones is being unveiled to adventure fans -- thanks to a 180-year-old tortoise!

The South American land tortoise was captured, killed and preserved in 1820 by Charles Waterton, one of the more eccentric of Stonyhurst College's former pupils.

When Charles Waterton left Stonyhurst he became a fearless explorer, collecting specimens of birds and animals, including what is now known as the Waterton Tortoise.

He is alleged to have once jumped on the back of a cayman -- a South American reptile similar to an alligator -- which was attacking him and "seized his forelegs, and, by main force, twisted them on his back, where they served me for a bridle."

To deter any more questions about the episode he went on to explain: "Should it be asked how I managed to keep my seat, I would answer, I hunted some years with Lord Darlington's foxhounds."

Waterton also, on one famous occasion, defeated a boa constrictor with a right hook to the snake's jaw.

At Stonyhurst he was not a model pupil, being regularly chastised for bird nesting, and he had a flair for getting into scrapes," said Jan Graffius, the curator of the Stonyhurst collections.

"He kept a pack of hounds at the college to hunt polecats and he filled his dormitory with all manner of countryside curiosities."

She added: "But he went on to do pioneering work on anaesthetics by using arrow-poison from Guiana which laid the basis for some of the drugs used in modern anaesthesia. He preserved his tortoise by his patent, revolutionary method. He did not stuff it but hollowed it out and soaked it in an alcoholic solution of perchloride of mercury which preserves the carcass."

Jan is putting together an exhibition of the college's history, in which the tortoise and a painting of Waterton riding the cayman will take pride of place. The exhibition will open in the summer.

She said: "Charles Waterton was a fascinating character and in later life he created one of the country's first bird sanctuaries and nature reserves at his family seat at Walton Hall, near Wakefield."Waterton took exception to being called an eccentric, but at the age of 77 often demonstrated 'elasticity of muscle' by scratching the back of his head with the big toe of his right foot!