' 
90 NOTES TAKEN, 
k-r-r-r-r, rattle, rattle, rattle, and a voice exclaimed, “look 
out, look to your left,” and sure enough, there, almost under 
my horse’s feet and coiled ready to strike, lay an enormous 
diamond rattlesnake, looking ten times more deadly in the 
moonlight. Bang! bang! went revolvers—k-r-r-r-r, k-r-r-r-r, 
went the rattle—‘ there he goes,”—* here he is,’”—“ there, 
hit him with your ramrod,’—*“ah, that will do,’”—“ now, 
bring him out.” “My eyes, what a whopper! did yees iver 
see thé like ? sure we have none of sich divils in the ould 
country, the bloody tief; what do they make sich a ting fur 
ony how 2” said Paddy Thompson (the same lad who had his 
eyes bunged in the late melee) “hould im up ’till I look at 
im,”—and there he hung, six feet long and eJeven rattles,— 
“an soul, but it’s mesilf ‘ill kape out o’ the weeds if there 
mouy jintilmen like him there,” said the same genius. This 
was the first large specimen we had met with. Our long 
boots and thick gloves were now indispensable, as these jintle- 
men are not at all trustworthy. _ 
_ This Thompson was a queer specimen of the Emerald Isle. 
An old deserter from the British army, he was the Caleb 
Quotem of his company, soldier, smith, carpenter, shoemaker, 
poet and vocalist, but his love of whiskey kept him in the 
hands af tha a . ian abe Pasiekk 
as 5 Lor 
of his time. 
It was amusing, on the march, to hear him rolling out his 
Irish camp songs, one of which—the confounded refrain of 
which rings in my ears as I write—called the fate of Nell 
Flaherty’s Drake, was a great favorite among his comrades, 
