60 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



where they were ; the rats had got the better of a few, 

 attacking them and biting them through the neck and 

 vertebrae. 



Some of the small harmless snakes are most lovely to 

 behold. Three kinds I remember especially : one was 

 rainbow-hued, or mother-of-pearl, with shaded bars, an 

 exquisitely iridescent little being ; another was of a gleam- 

 ing jet-black above, below, crimson merging into coral 

 and pure white. This sort I saw one day when, just as I 

 was going to sit down on a couch, F. cried out hastily, 

 1 Mind ! don't sit on my coat,' his coat happening to lie 

 there. ' Why, is there a snake in the pocket ? ' I asked. 

 * Yes, and you might kill it.' That was not exactly the 

 sense in which I had spoken, so kept clear of the coat, not, 

 however, being much surprised. 



The third was a little green beauty, living mostly in 

 trees, a transparent, apple-tinted, timid creature, and 

 quite harmless. We had at one time a small Ceara-rubber 

 plantation of our own, and often have I seen this little 

 green snake, no more than twelve inches long, gliding in 

 and out among the leaves, or, as it were, sailing towards 

 one — so graceful is the poise of the slender, swan-like head 

 and throat — then darting away in alarm, though no one 

 ever harmed it. 



Many a time, when pulling off dead bits among the ferns 

 in the verandahs, have I seen and felt a little snake wriggle 

 from between my fingers — no fern spray, but a living, 

 frightened thing, harmless for the most part ; or pushed 

 aside one on the matting in the house, taking it to be a 

 piece of rope, till it twisted round my foot for an instant 

 and then was gone. 



Long after I left India — so strong becomes the habit of 

 years — I never moved out of doors at dusk without tapping 

 the ground with foot or umbrella in place of the little cane 

 one uses there when walking in the compound, just to warn 



