426 



HISTORY OF FROGS, LIZARDS, AND SERPENTS. 



smooth scales. The bite of this animal is 

 said to be incurable, the patient dying in 

 about an hour after the wound ; the whole 

 frame being dissolved into one putrid mass of 

 corruption. 



" People get used to these things, and even Europeans 

 by degrees come to regard them with much indifference. 

 Just before leaving the colony, I spent a week or two 

 ivith my friend Major Pigot, at his residence near Gra- 

 ham's Town ; and going one day to take a book from 

 some shelves in the drawing-room, I found a beautiful 

 yellow snake, about five feet long, lying asleep upon the 

 uppermost range of books. It lay so still that I at first 

 thought it was a stuffed specimen ; but perceiving a 

 slight movement in its tail, I lent him such a thwack 

 with a quarto volume as broke the poor fellow's back, 

 and enabled me to demolish him at my leisure. I 

 afterwards learned that another snake had been killed a 

 few days previously in the very same spot, and a third in 

 Major P.'s dressing-room. They had all entered through 

 a loop hole which had casually been left open, and 

 apparently had no other object in coming there (mousing 

 apart) than literary seclusion. 



" Such as these are no very uncommon occurrences, 

 and as such pass even for subjects of jocularity amidst 

 the adventures of a wild country. Instances, however, 

 both frightful and revolting, sometimes occur. 



"It is well known that the Bushmen, a tribe of wild 

 Hottentots who inhabit the mountains and deserts of 

 South Africa, imbue the points of their arrows in a 

 strong and subtle poison, and that the venom of the 

 most dangerous serpents to be found in that country 

 forms a principal ingredient in its composition. The 

 boldness and dexterity displayed by these wild hunts- 

 men, and by many also of the colonial Hottentots, 

 in searching out and seizing alive the formidable 

 cobra-capello and puff-adder, are truly astonishing. 

 Still more surprising is it to witness the snake-hunter 

 extracting from the yet living and writhing reptile, 

 held fast by his naked foot planted on its neck, the little 

 bag containing the secreted venom, which the rage of 

 the animal injects into the wound made by its fangs at 

 the moment it strikes its victim, to see him take this, 

 and fearlessly drink its contents, as school-boys in 

 England would suck the blob of the honey-bee ! The 

 swallowing of this venom, they conceive, renders them 

 in time proof against its deleterious effects, when it is 

 brought into immediate contact with the blood, whether 

 by the bite of a snake or the barb of an arrow. 



" Several of the most respectable Dutch colonists as- 

 sured me, as a fact which had come within their own 

 knowledge, that there are to be found among the wander- 

 ing Bushmen persons whom they term slang mcesters 

 (snake masters), who actually possess the power of 

 charming the fiercest serpents, and of readily curing 

 their bite ; and who pretend that they can communicate 

 to others their mysterious powers and invulnerability, 

 by putting them through a regular course of poison- 

 eating. 



" The more usual object, however, of the Bushman in 

 catching serpents (exclusive of their value to him as an 

 cuticle of food), is to procure poison for his arrows. The 

 animal venom, too thin and volatile to preserve its 

 efficacy long unimpaired when used alone, is skilfully 

 concocted into a black glutinous consistency, by the 

 admixture of powerful vegetable and mineral poisons ; 

 the former being generally the juice of the root of a 

 species of amaryllis, called by the boors, from this cir- 

 cumstance, the gift-bolt or poison-bulb : the latter, a 

 bituminous or unctuous substance which is said to exude 

 from certain rocks and caverns. With this deadly mix- 

 lure the dwarfish and despised African anoints the des- 



To remedy the bite of all these animals, per- 

 haps salad oil would be very efficacious ; how- 

 ever, the Indians make use of a composition, 

 which is called in Europe, Petro de Cobra, or 

 the Serpent-stone ; and which applied to the 



perate weapons with which he resists (though unavail- 

 ingly) the aggressions of the colonists, and sometimes 

 cruelly revenges the injuries they have inflicted." 



To the above interesting account, by Mr Pringle, of 

 the Serpents of South Africa, we may here add Mr 

 Waterton's observations on the Snakes of South America, 

 or, more properly, Demerara. 



" Snakes," says that eccentric and enterprising na- 

 turalist, "are frequently met with in the woods betwixt 

 the sea-coast and the rock Saba, chiefly near the creeks 

 and on the banks of the river. They are large, beauti- 

 ful, and formidable. The rattle-snake seems partial to a 

 tract of ground known by the name of Canal, No. 3 ; 

 there the effects of his poison will be long remembered. 



"The camoudi has been killed from thirty to forty 

 feet long ; though not venomous, his size renders him 

 destructive to the passing animals. The Spaniards in 

 the Oroonoque positively affirm that he grows to the 

 length of seventy or eighty feet, and that he will destroy 

 the strongest and largest bull. His name seems to con- 

 firm this : there he is called ' matatoro,' which literally 

 means 'bull killer.' Thus he may be ranked amongst 

 the deadly snakes ; for it comes nearly to the same thing 

 in the end, whether the victim dies by poison from the 

 fangs which corrupts his blood and makes it stink horri- 

 bly, or whether his body be crushed to mummy, and 

 swallowed by this hideous beast. 



" The whip-snake, of a beautiful changing green, and 

 the coral, with alternate broad traverse bars of black and 

 red, glides from bush to bush, and may be handled with 

 safety; they are harmless little creatures. 



"The labarri snake is speckled, of a dirty brown 

 colour, and can scarcely be distinguished from the 

 ground or stump on which he is coiled up ; he grows to 

 the length of about eight feet, and his bite often proves 

 fatal in a few minutes. 



" Unrivalled in his display of every lovely colour of 

 the rainbow, and unmatched in the effects of his deadly 

 poison, the counacouchi glides undaunted on, sole mon- 

 arch of these forests ; he is commonly known by the 

 name of the bush-master. Both man and beast fly be- 

 fore him, and allow him to pursue an undisputed path. 

 He sometimes grows to the length of fourteen feet. 



' A few small caimen, from two to twelve feet long, 

 may be observed now and then in passing up and down 

 the river ; they just keep their heads above water, and 

 a stranger would not know them from a rotten stump. 



"Snakes in these wilds are certainly an annoyance, 

 though, perhaps, more in imagination than reality, for 

 you must recollect that the serpent is never the first to 

 offend ; his poisonous fang was not given him for conquest; 

 he never inflicts a wound with it but to defend exis- 

 tence. Provided you walk cautiously, and do not 

 absolutely touch him, you may pass in safety close by 

 him. As he is often coiled up on the ground, and 

 amongst the branches of the trees above you, a degree of 

 circumspection is necessary, lest you unwarily disturb 

 him. One morning I had been following a new species 

 of parouquet, and the day being rainy, I had taken an 

 umbrella to keep the gun dry, and had left it under a tree ; 

 whilst searching about for it I observed a young coula- 

 canara, ten feet long, moving slowly onwards in a path 

 where timber had formerly been dragged along ; I saw 

 he was not thick enough to break my arm in case he got 

 twisted round it. There was not a moment tq be lost. 

 I laid hold of his tail with the left hand, one knee, beiiig 

 on the ground ; with the right I took off' my hat, 



