450 THRILLING ADVENTURES. 



round and compressing the bodies of their victims with such 

 force, that the largest animals often fall a prey to them. In 

 general they are to be found in hot morasses, swamps, the 

 borders of rivers, and the tangled underwood of dark forests ; 

 sometimes half floating in the stream, they lurk for their prey, 

 which, as it unsuspectingly stoops to drink, is suddenly en- 

 folded in their crushing coils. 



The largest that have of late days been killed have not ex- 

 ceeded forty feet in length ; but instances are recorded of 

 much larger ones having been destroyed, even as long as sixty 

 two feet. Pliny tells us, that the army of Regulus, when at 

 war with Carthage, killed one near the river Bagrada, in 

 Africa, whose length was one hundred and twenty feet. 



Some of the early Dutch colonists give accounts of snakes 

 having been killed by them in the East Indies of enormous 

 size : one, when opened, was found to contain the body of a 

 full grown deer, with its skin and limbs entire ; in another, 

 when examined, was found a wild he-goat with its horns. The 

 writer says, that these monsters were sometimes kept for the 

 sake of attacking buffaloes, in the kingdom of Aracan, on the 

 frontier of Bengal. 



The tail of the boa has the power of clasping anything with 

 great firmness; and is furnished with two hook-like claws, 

 sheathed with horn, which are supported upon bones, and put 

 in action by powerful muscles. Hence it can easily suspend 

 itself from the branch of a tree, as it waits for its victim, or 

 partially fold itself round any trunk it may be near, and thus 

 gain additional power to resist the convulsions of its unfor- 

 tunate prey. Mr. McLeod narrates an instance that came 

 under his notice which may serve to illustrate this, " A negro 

 herdsman belonging to the governor of Fort William had been 

 seized by one of these monsters by the thigh ; but from his 

 situation, in a wood, the serpent in attempting to throw him- 

 self round him, got entangled with a tree ; and the man being 

 thus preserved from a state of compression, which would in- 



