278 ANECDOTE OF A PYTHON. 



hissing, and many contortions of the body, finally secured, 

 and brought up for my inspection. 



During our residence at Sarawak, a very handsomely 

 variegated Python, about fourteen feet in length, was de- 

 tected in the act of devouring a chicken, beneath the 

 boards of Mr. Brooke's house. A party, headed by the 

 gunner, armed with boarding-pikes, soon wounded the 

 reptile, and secured him. When brought to me, he was 

 apparently in a dying condition, so, after admiring the 

 beauty of his spotted skin, 1 fastened him to a post in my 

 friend RuppelTs room. During the dinner-hour, how- 

 ever, he had recovered himself, slipped the noose over 

 his head, and escaped, no one knew whither, and all 

 our searching after the beautiful snake was unavailing. 

 During a visit to Sarawak, in September, 1844, Ruppell 

 informed me that many months afterwards, on some 

 stores having been removed, the same Python was dis- 

 covered, comfortably coiled up under some bags of rice. 

 No half-measures were pursued this time by his mer- 

 ciless captors; he was transfixed with spears, his head cut 

 off, and his skin preserved as a trophy. He measured, 

 after death, fourteen feet in length. Before the search 

 was made, several fowls and pigeons were found lacerated, 

 and half-dragged under the house. A party of Songi 

 Dyaks, from Serambo, having occasion to make a journey 

 to Sarawak, encountered a Python on the banks of the 

 river, thirty feet long ; they succeeded in killing it, and 

 tied its head to a tree on the river's brink. The day 

 before our trip to the Antimony and Gold Mines, it was 

 seen extended across the river, secured to the trunk of a 

 tree, but when we passed the spot, it had unluckily been 



