A FORMIDABLE REPTILE. I 25 



— for several Mantatees had joined me soon after 

 I had shot at the crocodile. The cause was a 

 large snake crossing our path. The reptile, I 

 think, supposed itself mobbed, therefore showed 

 fight, and looked very much as if it could and 

 intended to do mischief, so I put a bullet through 

 its head. Soon after it was hacked in pieces, the 

 Mantatees taking home logs of it, doubtless to feed 

 upon (I use the word logs, as the middle of the 

 carcass was greater in circumference than the upper 

 portion of my thigh, and looked very much like 

 blocks of wood). I think the creature was over 

 twenty feet long, and unquestionably belonged to 

 the constrictor family. Its markings, shape of head, 

 and general contour were exactly those of the rock- 

 snake of India and China. [This estimated size is 

 far from excessive in this species, for I remember 

 one being killed at the back of the Murray Barracks, 

 Hong Kong, nearly equal in dimensions to our late 

 antagonist, and of encountering another at Kowloon, 

 which my dear old friend Mr. Duus and self failed 

 to stop, although each had fired into it a charge of 

 No. 6. The provoking part of this adventure was 

 that the brute took off with it a domestic fowl, that 

 it had seized in the vicinity of some of the adjoining 

 coolies' huts. I am under the impression, from this 

 circumstance and the examination of the teeth of 

 many others, that once this species takes hold of its 

 prey it has a difficulty to release it, from the points 



