THE START 25 



time it looked as if it had made almost a complete single 

 spiral revolution of its own body. It never for a moment 

 relaxed its grip except to shift slightly the jaws. 



In a few minutes the jararaca was dead, its head crushed 

 in, although the body continued to move convulsively. 

 When satisfied that its opponent was dead, the mussurama 

 began to try to get the head in its mouth. This was a 

 process of some difficulty on account of the angle at which 

 the lower jaw of the jararaca stuck out. But finally the 

 head was taken completely inside and then swallowed. 

 After this, the mussurama proceeded deliberately, but with 

 unbroken speed, to devour its opponent by the simple 

 process of crawling outside it, the body and tail of the 

 jararaca writhing and struggling until the last. During 

 the early portion of the meal, the mussurama put a stop 

 to this writhing and struggling by resting its own body 

 on that of its prey; but toward the last the part of the 

 body that remained outside was left free to wriggle as it 

 wished. 



Not only was the mussurama totally indifferent to our 

 presence, but it was totally indifferent to being handled 

 while the meal was going on. Several times I replaced 

 the combatants in the middle of the table when they had 

 writhed to the edge, and finally, when the photographers 

 found that they could not get good pictures, I held the 

 mussurama up against a white background with the par- 

 tially swallowed snake in its mouth; and the feast went 

 on uninterruptedly. I never saw cooler or more utterly 

 unconcerned conduct; and the ease and certainty with 

 which the terrible poisonous snake was mastered gave me 

 the heartiest respect and liking for the easy-going, good- 



