PYTHONS 81 



tations, and in this case we enjoin a strict limitation. Al- 

 though between forty and fifty Pythons of two large species 1 

 leave Singapore every year, let it not for one moment be 

 supposed that anywhere in the East Indies are these serpents 

 so numerous that they constitute a danger to human life, 

 or that it is even possible to find them by hunting for them. 

 Quite the contrary. 



I spent several months in the Far East, roaming through 

 jungles of all kinds, some of them so dense and so full of 

 deadly bogs and miasma that now I recall them with a shudder. 

 I never once found a wild Python, great or small; nor a 

 cobra, even in cobra-ridden Hindustan; nor did any of my 

 own native followers ever find a specimen of either for me. 

 The only wild Python I ever saw or handled in its home jungle 

 was one that was brought to me in the Malay Peninsula. It 

 was hiding in a hollow tree, and when it looked out at a Malay 

 who was passing, he whipped out his parong, cut off its head 

 at one blow, and came to me calmly dragging behind him 

 twelve feet of dead snake. 



So far as I could learn, even the largest Pythons are 

 harmless to man. They sometimes visit native villages, 

 crawl through the frail fences which very feebly protect the 

 domestic animals, and swallow — chickens and ducks! It is 

 in these humble raids that some Pythons come to grief by 

 being caught alive. But jungle people have no fear that a 

 Python would make such a blunder as to attempt to make 

 a conquest of a man. To be sure, in the Ear East, people do 



1 The Black-Tailed Python {Py'thon mo-lu'rus), although smaller than the Retic- 

 ulated, attains a length of 20 feet. 



