SMALL GAME SHOOTING. 135 



horse, was stung by a snake in the foot, and on 

 our return to camp from the beat alluded to 

 above, we found him in great pain, and the in- 

 jured limb much swollen. 



I therefore put a strap round his leg just below 

 his knee, pulling it as tight as I could, made a 

 slight incision where he had been stung, and 

 rubbed some gunpowder into it. I then gave him 

 a pint bottle of arrack (a strong native spirit, and 

 the curse of the British soldier in the East who is 

 wont to indulge too freely in it). 



The man swallowed it after a little demur, 

 and dropped off into a sound sleep, from which 

 he did not awake for six and twenty hours ; but by 

 then the swelling had gone down, and he was free 

 from pain. 



It was certainly a case of kill, or cure, and 

 several times I thought the man was dead, and 

 was only reassured by feeling his heart beating, 

 arid seeing his breath on a small looking-glass 

 held to his mouth. However, the tension of my 

 feelings was such that I gave up being an amateur 

 physician for the future.* 



* Since writing the above I have come across a curious corrobora- 

 tion of my treatment. It is an old book, published in 1822, and 

 written by a Dr. Daniel Johnson in the H.E.LC.S. He describes 

 being once bitten himself by a black snake, when, seizing a bottle 

 of madeira, he drank the whole of it straight off, and then ran up and 



