628 



THE TKOPICAL WORLD. 



But Wallace goes beyond Du Chaillu in his accounts of the actual size of serpents 

 existing in the almost unexplored Malayan islands. He says :* " One day my boy AH 

 came home with a story of a big snake. He was walking through some high grass, 

 and stepped on something which he took for a small fallen tree ; but it felt cold and 

 yielding to his feet, and far to the right and left there was a waving and rustling of 

 the herbage. He jumped back in affright, and prepared to shoot ; but could not get 



a good view of the creature, and it passed away, he said, like a tree being dragged 

 through the grass. As he had several times already shot large snakes, which he de- 

 clared were all as nothing compared with this, I am inclined to believe it must have 

 really been a monster. Such creatures are rather plentiful here, for a man close by 

 showed me on his thigh the marks where he had been seized by one close to his house. 



* Malay Archipelago, 392. 



