THE SNAKE-STONE. 297 



berg, in his Travels in South Africa, "the blood of the tur- 

 tle was much cried up, which, on account of this extraor- 

 dinary virtue, the inhabitants dry in the form of small scales 

 or membranes, and carry about them when they travel in 

 this country, which swarms with this most noxious vermin. 

 Whenever any one is wounded by a serpent, he takes a couple 

 of pinches of the dried blood internally, and applies a little 

 of it to the wound."* 



And Kolben, when speaking of the cobras (called by the 

 first colonists the hair-serpent), says : 



" Some affirm that there is in the head of the hair-serpent 

 a stone, which is a never failing antidote both against the 

 poison of this and every other sort of serpent. I killed a 

 great many hair-serpents at the Cape, and searched very 

 narrowly the heads of all I killed in order to find this stone, 

 but I could never discover any such thing. Perhaps it is 

 only to be found at one season of the year, as are the stones 

 in the heads of crawfish. 



"There are in the hands of the Cape Europeans," Kolben 

 goes on to say, " a great many stones called serpent-stones, 

 but they are artificial ones. They are brought from the East 

 Indies, where they are prepared by the Brachmans, who are 

 alone, it seems, possessed of the secret of the composition, 

 and will not let it go out of their own body at any price. I 

 am heartily sorry the secret is not in the Christian world, 

 and that the Brachmans are inflexible in this particular, be- 

 cause those stones are of admirable virtues. I saw one of 

 them tried upon a child at the Cape, who had receiv'd a pois- 

 onous bite in one of the arms, but it could not be discover'd 

 from what creature. When the stone was brought, the arm 

 was prodigiously swell' d and inflam'd. The stone, being ap- 

 plied to the wound, stuck to it very closely, without any 

 mamier of bandage or support, drinking in the poison till it 



* Turtle blood is also asserted to be a good remedy against wounds 

 caused by poisoned arrows. 



N2 



