THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



of the islands in the lake. When they reached the 

 island, the son, notwithstanding the repeated 

 warnings of his father, jumped out; but he had 

 no sooner done so, than he gave an agonised yell, 

 and fell back ; the father immediately sprung out, 

 but was also struck by the snake, but not so 

 severely. They got the young man into the boat, 

 but he swelled to a horrible size, and, bleeding at 

 eyes, nose, and mouth, died in less than half-an- 

 hour. Our friend and the father now set out on 

 their return to Valencia with the dead body. A 

 storm had in the meantime arisen, and they were 

 in the greatest danger of being capsized. The old 

 man was suffering fearful agony from his bite, and 

 had nearly gone out of his mind ; and the nar- 

 rator described in graphic terms the horrors of his 

 situation, in a frail canoe, in a dark night during 

 a severe storm, and the momentary expectation of 

 being capsized, his only companion being a mad 

 father lamenting over the body of his dead son."* 



Even the most insignificant of creatures may be 

 the scourge of the most exalted. We have seen 

 some examples of insect pests in a former chapter, 

 and of their ravages and successful assaults 

 against man ; but that he should be actually slain 

 in mortal conflict with a fly is something unusual. 

 Yet last summer this happened in India. 



"Two European gentlemen belonging to the 

 Indian Railway Company,— viz., Messrs. Arm- 

 strong and Boddington— were surveying a place 

 called Bunder Coode, for the purpose of throwing 

 a bridge across the Nerbudda, the channel of 

 which, being in this place from ten to fifty yards 

 wide, is fathomless, having white marble rocks 

 rising perpendicularly on either side from a hun- 

 dred to a hundred and fifty feet high, and beetling 

 * Sullivan's "Rambles in N. and S. America," p. 409. 

 254 



