xiv SNAKES 141 



natives of having stolen them for food, accused them 

 of the theft. They stoutly denied the charge, and 

 when my cook brought me several half-eaten onions 

 from my store, I came to the conclusion that some 

 animal or other had been the cunning marauder 

 in both cases. The tooth-marks on the onions, 

 however, were strange to me, but the natives were 

 positive in their assertions that the indentations had 

 been made by a snake. Curiously enough, some 

 days later, I happened to be rummaging in my 

 store, where I kept all my provisions and ivory, 

 and chanced to pull out from among the other 

 goods a large tusk, measuring some eight feet 

 in length. Now the root of every tusk is hollow, 

 and in this particular one the cavity was about two 

 feet six inches long and about seven inches in 

 diameter. Immediately I pulled it free from the 

 stack, a snake, some seven feet in length, shot out of 

 the hollow end of the tusk and slipped out of sight 

 among the pile of .packages. Calling my men 

 together, I told them to prod with their sticks 

 among the wares, and ere long they drove the 

 reptile out into the open, where they beat it to death. 

 The skin of this serpent, which the Angoni call 

 lepinganombie, the Mwera, lebomah, was of a dark 

 mottled grey colour. This particular species is most 

 deadly and accounts for numbers of the natives' 

 cattle and goats. 



