SNAKES AND CROCODILES 



Everyone asks me about the snakes of the 

 jungle, and I must admit that they were the 

 animals I most feared in going into the tropics. 

 On the big boat that took me from New Orleans 

 to the Canal Zone I heard some hair-raising snake 

 stories, but it was encouraging to find that the 

 tales of men killed by snake bite while digging 

 the Canal grew less terrifying the nearer we came 

 to the Isthmus. At New Orleans I had been told 

 that hundreds died. At Colon they said that 

 there had been a few snake-bitten men. But I 

 found only one person who actually knew of such 

 a case, and he assured me that the man recovered 

 from the effects of the poison. 



My reading and my common sense had told 

 me all this before I left the north, and I had 

 planned to wear rubber-soled tennis shoes and 

 canvas leggings in the jungle, as being noiseless 

 and light. However, a friend who studies snakes 

 and who had spent some time in Central America 

 advised heavy shoes and leather puttees. He said 

 quite frankly that he had spent nearly half a year 

 looking for poisonous snakes in the Central 

 American jungle, and that he had not found half 

 a dozen in all that time. But he told me also 

 that if I should happen to run across a poisonous 



107 



