200 THE RATTLESNAKE. 



With Pape's gun in my hand, still accompanied, by 

 Chance and Brutus, I saw a pedestrian coming towards 

 my waggons, who suddenly jumped many feet out of the 

 road, while, at the same time, he as well as my men called 

 and beckoned to each other. I also saw that he picked up 

 a stone and flung it at something in the road. My men 

 then, in obedience to orders, called to me, and, on arriving 

 near enough to hear what they said, I heard the word 

 " Rattlesnake !" So I called to George to secure my dogs, 

 and walked up to the spot. Now, then, at last had ar 

 rived one of the longed-for moments in my travels in 

 which I was to see alive, in his own wilderness, one of 

 those deadly snakes, that I had hitherto met with but in 

 a glass case in the Regent 's-park gardens ; and I can scarce 

 describe the sort of charmed sensations that beset me ! It 

 seemed that between my waggons and the advancing 

 pedestrian, in the hot dusty track, and sunning himself, 

 lay a rattlesnake, so far in the middle of the beaten way 

 that his retreat was impracticable as well as impeded to 

 some extent by the wayfarer's stone, which had struck 

 him slightly near the tail. Finding himself cut off from 

 shelter, and thus assaulted, the reptile had coiled himself 

 up for mischief, much as our adders or snakes do in similar 

 situations, with his head overlaying his coils, and bent back 

 in a threatening position and ready to strike at anything 

 that came within reach of his poisonous fangs. Having 

 snake-boots on, the reptile being not much over three 

 feet in length or thereabouts, I went up close to him to 

 examine his real appearance on his native prairie, and to 

 watch his action. On advancing the muzzle of my gun 

 close to him he instantly struck it with his teeth, looking, 

 I thought, considerably disappointed that he could make 

 no impression, when, on immediately inspecting the new 



