2o6 



The Country Gentleman s Magazine 



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THE JARARACA. 



THE Jararaca {Bdhrops Neimnedii, Spix.) 

 is the substitute of the rattlesnake in 

 Brazil. About Rio it is frequently met with 

 in plantations, and in bushy and grassy places 

 by the sides of woods, but is scarcely ever 

 found in dense forests. The Rev. Hamlet 

 Clark, in his " Letters Home," gives an ac- 

 count of his first introduction to it, which may 

 serve for that of the reader too : — 



"We were riding slowly along in single file, our 

 guide leading, when, as we passed a broken horizontal 

 limb of a tree, close to the side of the path, all at 

 once he woke up into active life. He was off his mule 

 in a trice, handed me (I was next in file) the rein and 

 his whip, had cut down and whittled clean a cane 

 sapling, and then with all his force whack came the 

 cane on the broken branch ! Now we knew what the 

 man was after. At once there uncoiled itself and fell 

 to the ground a splendid serpent (the man said 9 

 feet long, we thought not quite so much), the deadliest 

 serpent known here. He was sleeping, twisted round 

 the branch in the sunshine, black and bright yellow, 

 very hideous in its beauty. A villainous flat broad 

 head, made uglier by a thin neck, snapped at us in 

 every direction as we stood round it, and a single snap 

 that hit its mark would have been certain and speedy 

 death to man or beast." 



Deadly enough its bite certainly is, but not 

 quite so invariably fatal as Mr Clark supposed. 

 People are said to have died from it within 

 the space of two or three minutes after hav- 

 ing been bitten, but more generally they sur- 

 vive for ten or twelve hours, and many recover 

 ■entirely or rather do not die, but their con- 

 stitution is almost always broken, and they 

 suffer much from ulcerated limbs. 



Gardiner in his " Travels in the Interior of 

 Brazil" mentions the case of a female slave, 

 about thirty-two years of age, and the mother 

 of four children, who, whilst weeding Indian 

 corn on a plantation, about eight miles dis- 

 tant from the house, was bitten by a Jararaca 

 on the right hand, between the bones of the 

 forefinger and thumb. He describes both the 



symptoms and the treatment. The acciden t 

 took place about eight o'clock in the morn- 

 ing, and immediately after she left to return 

 home, but only reached half way when she 

 was obliged to lie down from excessive pain 

 and exhaustion. At this time she said the 

 feeling of thirst was very great. Some slaves 

 belonging to the estate to which she be- 

 longed happened to be near, one of them 

 rode off to inform the manager. When he 

 arrived he found the arm much swollen up 

 to the shoulder, beneath which he applied a 

 ligature. From a cottage in the neighbour- 

 hood he got a little hartshorn, some of which 

 he applied to the bite, and caused her to 

 swallow about a teaspoonful in water. Being 

 in a state of high fever, he took about i lb. 

 of blood from her, after which she became 

 faintish. She was then removed to the 

 Fazenda, and had two grains of calomel ad- 

 ministered to her, and about an hour after a 

 large dose of castor oil. Gardiner saw her the 

 following day, when she still complained of 

 excruciating pain in the hand and arm, to 

 relieve which a linseed meal poultice was 

 applied ; and the pulse being 130, and full, 

 about another lb. of blood was taken from the 

 other arm. Next day a number of little 

 vesicles made their appearance on the back of 

 the hand, and a little above the wrist, which, 

 when opened, discharged a watery fluid. For 

 the next two days she continued to suffer 

 much pain, to relieve which poultices were 

 constantly applied. More vesicles formed, 

 and the cuticle began to peel off in the 

 vicinity of the bite. On the fourth day after 

 the accident, when the poultice was removed, 

 she complained of no pain at all in her hand, 

 and on careful examination it was found 

 that gangrene had taken place, all below the 

 wrist being dead, and from the state of the 



