1 8 HISTORY OF THE [BOOK. r. 



Disposer of all tilings lias regarded the islands of the 

 West Indies ^'ith peculiar favour; inasmuch as their 

 serpents are wholly destitute of poison, v and they 

 possess no animal of prey, to desolate their vallies. 



* I say this on the authority of Brown, Charlevoix, and Hughes, (of 

 whom the first compiled the History of Jamaica, the second that of Hi- 

 spnniola, and the last of Barbadoes), on the testimony of many gentle- 

 men who have resided in several of the Windward islands and on my 

 own experience during a residence of eighteen years in Jamaica. In that 

 time I neither knew nor heard of any person being hurt from the bite of 

 any one species of the numerous snakes or lizards known in that island. 

 Some of the snakes I have myself handled with perfect security. I con- 

 clude, therefore, (notwithstanding the contrary assertion of Du Tertre 

 respecting Martinico and St. Lucia), thai all the islands are providenti- 

 ally exempted from this evil. Nevertheless it must be admitted, that th; 

 circumstance is extraordinary \ inasmuch as every part of the continent 

 of America, but especially those provinces which lie under the equator, 

 abound in a high degree with serpents, whose bite is mortal. Mr. Ban- 

 croft, in his Account of Guiana, gives a dreadful list of such as are 

 found in that extensive country; and, in speaking of one, of a species 

 which he calls the small labarra, makes mention of a negro who was 

 unfortunately bit by it in the finger. The negro had but just time to 

 kill the snake, when his limbs became unable to support him, and he fell 

 to the giound, and expired in less than five minutes. Dr. Dancer, in his 

 History of the Expedition from Jamaica to Fort Juan on the Lake of Ni- 

 caragua, in 1780, which he attended as physician, relates the following 

 circumstance : A snake hanging from the bough of a tree bit one of the 

 soldiers, as he passed along, just under the orbit of the left eycj from 

 whence the poor man felt such intense pain, that he was unable to pro- 

 ceed ; and when a messenger was sent to him a few hours afterwards, he 

 was fount! dead, with all the symptoms of putrefaction, a yellowness and 

 swelling over his whole body j and the eye near to which he was bitten, 

 wholly dissolved. This circumstance was confirmed to me by Colonel 

 Kemble, who commanded in chief on that expedition. It may not be 

 useless to add, that those serpents which are venomous are furnished 

 with fangs somewhat resembling the tusks of a boar : they are moveable, 

 and inserted in the upper jaw. 



