THE BIG GAME OF AFRICA 



remained, showed that it had probably just exchanged this 

 for the new skin. 



In British East Africa snakes are fortunately not so 

 very often found, for they never occur there in such abund- 

 ance as they do in other countries, which have a more 

 damp and hot climate. During the fourteen months that 

 I have spent in East Africa I have only seen and killed 

 two pythons, two pufif adders, one long, green water snake, 

 and another black and very poisonous snake, the name of 

 which latter I do not know. This last snake was some five 

 feet in length and almost uniformly black. It crawled 

 into camp one Sunday morning, and the porters raised a 

 tremendous " kelele," shouting at the top of their lungs, 

 " Nyoka mbaya, nyoka mbaya, Bwana!" ("A poisonous 

 snake, a poisonous snake. Sir!") This hateful reptile I 

 also killed with a stick, as I did not want to spoil the skin 

 with a bullet. The porters again refused to handle it until 

 Mr. Lang and I had taken it up to show them that it was 

 dead. Gripping its head firmly with my left hand, I took 

 a little stick and pressed the point of one of the large fangs 

 to see what would happen. I noticed now how quite a 

 large drop of yellow substance was formed on the stick, 

 evidently constituting the reptile's deadly poison. I regret 

 that at the time I did not have any proper receptacle in 

 which to preserve the poison, for it would have been very 

 interesting to have had the substance analyzed afterwards. 

 This snake we did not skin, but preserved it in alcohol for 

 the museum. 



Besides snakes there seem to be very few reptiles in 

 British East Africa, with the exception of small iguanas, 



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