58 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



In all the years I spent in India never to my remembrance 

 did I hear of an authenticated case of death from snake- 

 bite amongst Europeans. Escapes — ' near shaves ' as one 

 likes to think them — most people have ; but the truth is 

 that every creature will try to make good its own escape as its 

 first aim and instinct, so that after all the danger has never 

 been so great as one imagined. Nevertheless, the snakes 

 of India cannot be disposed of so shortly as are those of 

 Ireland by the writer of a book on that country in his 

 famous chapter headed, ' On the Snakes of Ireland,' the begin- 

 ning and end of which is, ' There are no snakes in Ireland ' ! 



Snakes there certainly are in India, the most deadly of 

 all being one of the smallest, the Tic polonga ; it is but 

 some eighteen inches long ; a bite from it means death in 

 twenty minutes. If a person be bitten by what he takes 

 to be one of these snakes and live, he may know for certain 

 that it was no Tic polonga. With other snakes, to cut the 

 bite out is the best thing to do, though a man by himself 

 may not be able to manage this promptly enough to be 

 of any use before the venom shall have travelled along 

 his veins, and he be doomed. Cautery with a hot iron is, 

 of course, equally good, only the knife is generally handier. 

 Ammonia injected into the wound is useful, and sub- 

 cutaneous injections of strychnine or of a solution of 

 chloride of gold. Both these have proved efficacious as 

 antidotes, though in the case of cobra-bite I would trust to 

 nothing but the direct cautery or a sharp blade. I have 

 been told that (when no prompt action is taken) a lethargy 

 steals over the system, ending in the death swoon. As to 

 the sensations of a person bitten by a Tic polonga, none ever 

 survived long enough to tell, and speculation is useless. 



There are enormous snakes, of several varieties, which 

 are harmless, though looking formidable enough from their 

 size, notably rock-snakes. Only by their breathing can 

 they be distinguished, when still, from the stone or grass 



