LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



125 



Every morning, at breakfast, it came to his hand 

 for its allowance of milk ; but it fled from stran- 

 gers, and hissed if they meddled with it. 



By the way, Major Denham, in his African 

 Travels, mentions an instance of the supposed vir- 

 tues of the fat of serpents, when applied to beasts. 

 Near Lari, he and his party killed an enormous 

 snake, which he calls a species of coluber a 

 python, probably measuring eighteen feet from 

 the mouth to the tail. Five balls entered the ser- 

 pent, but it was still moving off, when two Arabs, 

 each armed with a sword, nearly severed the head 

 from the body. On opening the reptile, several 

 pounds of fat were found, and carefully taken off 

 by the two native guides. They pronounced it 

 to be a sovereign and much-prized remedy for 

 diseased cattle. 



As I looked at the collection of venomous ser- 

 pents, the least of which carried death under its 

 lips, the out-of-the-way remedies which the savage 

 and the half-civilized man successfully uses, came 

 into my mind. Their cures, if we may believe 

 honest witnesses, are far more frequent than those 

 effected by European science. 



Labat, when in the West Indies, was called to 

 confess a young negro, who had been bitten by a 

 serpent seven feet long, and as big as a man's leg, 

 three fingers' breadth above the ankle. The ser- 

 pent had been killed, under the idea that when 

 it was dead the poison, by some sympathetic law, 

 would act with less force. The patient was lying 

 on a plunk in the middle of his hut, between two 

 fires, covered with blankets, and yet he said he 

 was dying with cold, at the same time constantly 

 crying for drink to assuage a devouring internal 

 heat. He had also a prodigious desire to sleep. 

 His leg was very strongly tied below and above 

 his knee with a species of ozier, and both foot and 

 leg were horribly swollen, and so was the knee, 

 notwithstanding the ligatures. The worthy father 

 confessed him, but was obliged to hold his hand, 

 and keep moving it, to prevent him from sleeping 

 during the ceremony. He afterwards recovered. 

 Captain Forbes, in his highly interesting book, 

 Dahomey and the Dahomans, relates that the 

 natives have an infallible remedy for the bite of 

 the deadly cobra. One of the captain's hammock- 

 men had been bitten three times, but his father 

 was a doctor. Walking one day through some 

 long grass, the captain pointed to the bare legs of 

 his attendant, and hinted at his danger. " None," 

 said he ; "my father picks some grass, and if on 

 the same day the decoction is applied, the wound 

 heals at once." 



This did not seem strange to the captain, who 

 had seen the fights between the cobra and the 

 mongoose, in India. He says that the cobra has 

 always the advantage at first, and the mongoose, 

 apparently vanquished, retreats as far from his 

 enemy as possible, but, on devouring some wild 

 herb, revives, returns to the attack, and conquers. 

 In short, he corroborates the accounts given by 

 former travellers and observers, of these duels 

 between the quadruped and the reptile. 



9 



The same author records that, in the kingdom 

 of Dahomey, the killing by accident, or otherwise, 

 of a fetish snake, was formerly punished by death ; 

 but that the penalty is now mitigated to running 

 the gauntlet through the fetish priests, who be- 

 labor the criminal without mercy ; nor is he free 

 till he reaches water, to wash out his sin. The 

 captain states that the lions of Whydah are the 

 snake fetish house and the market. The former 

 is a temple built round a huge cotton-tree, in 

 which are, at all times, many snakes of the boa 

 species (python). These are allowed to roam 

 about at pleasure ; but, if found in a house, or at 

 a distance, a fetish man or woman is sought, 

 whose duty it is to induce the reptile to return, 

 and to reconduct it to its sacred abode, while all 

 that meet it must bow down and kiss the dust. 

 Morning and evening, many are to be seen pros- 

 trated before the door, whether worshipping the 

 snakes directly, or an invisible god, which is 

 known under the name of " Seh," through these 

 representatives, the gallant captain confesses that 

 he is not learned enough to determine. 



The fascination of serpents has been stoutly 

 maintained by some, and as strongly denied by 

 others. Acrell notices this phenomenon as being 

 confirmed by the evidence of several of his coun- 

 trymen, who had been a long while resident at 

 Philadelphia. They related that the American 

 rattlesnake, which they described as the most in- 

 dolent of serpents, unquestionably possessed this 

 power. They declared that, as the snake lies 

 under the shade of a tree, opening his jaws a 

 little, he fixes his brightly glittering eyes upon 

 any bird, or squirrel, which is in it. The squir- 

 rel, so runs their account, utters a mournful and* 

 feeble cry, and, as if foreseeing his fate, leaps 

 from bough to bough on every side, seemingly to 

 attempt a sudden escape ; but, struck with the 

 fascination, he comes down the tree, and flings 

 himself with a spring into the very jaws of his- 

 enemy. The observations of some Englishmen, 

 continues Acrell, seem to confirm the truth of this. 

 They shut up a mouse with one of these fascinat- 

 ing rattlesnakes in an iron box ; the mouse sat. in 

 one corner the rattlesnake was opposite to it. The 

 reptile fixed its eye, terrible as Vathek's, upon 

 the little trembler, which was, at last, forced to 

 throw itself into the mouth of the serpent. Acrell 

 adds, that the same experiment was repeated in; 

 Italy with a pregnant female viper with the same 

 success.* 



A piece of evidence, apparently unintentional, . 

 occurs in Captain Forbes' book, already noticed 1. 

 On passing from the viceroy's house at Ahomey, 

 (the grass very high,) he observed, within an 

 inch of his leg, a small lizard, with its eyes fixed. 

 It did not move on his approach. At the same 

 moment, a cobra darted at it, and, before he could 

 raise his stick, bore it away " rather a narrow* 

 escape from death," as the captain quietly ob- 

 serves. The captain makes no comment on that< 



* Am. Acad. 



