222 VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. chap. viit. 



of his African poems ; but tliis was the first time I had ob- 

 tained any honey during my journey. The natives sometimes 

 manifest great shrewdness in discovering the haunts of the 

 bees. One of them, going to a fountain, saw some grains of 

 pollen on the grass, and said, " A bee has been here to drink, 

 and there must be honey in the neighbourhood : " this he 

 ultimately discovered to be the case. Towards evening, we 

 passed Eodewall, where Pringle and his party were so hospit- 

 ably entertained on the way to their location, and soon after 

 reached Orange Grrove, the residence of Mr. James Hart, 

 Y/here we halted for the night. 



His dwelling lies in a sort of wooded hollow at the base of 

 the Bosch mountains, a neighbourhood said to be much in- 

 fested with reptiles and ferocious animals, and on my return 

 rather late from a botanising excursion in a lonely dell, we 

 heard many accounts of the injuries they had inflicted. The 

 day before our arrival, a Cobra de capella had sprung at a 

 man who was cutting poles in a glen not far from the house, 

 and a short time before two Caffre children were sitting on 

 the ground outside their hut, when a snake came out of a 

 hole and bit one of them, who died in less than three hours. 

 When bitten by a venomous snake, the natives seek a person 

 called a poison-sucker, generally a bushman, as these people 

 suck the wound with impunity. If no poison-sucker is at 

 hand, they cut open a live fowl at the breast, and press the 

 cut surface against the wounded part, when the fowl soon dies ; 

 another is then applied ; and the process is thus continued, 

 until no effect is produced on the fowl. This neighbourhood 

 was also the resort of great numbers of jackals and wolves; 

 the latter were very destructive to foals, and had been known 

 to attack a horse. Our host had adopted the plan of ridding 

 himself of these enemies by poison. He told us that about 

 two years before he had got some nux vomica and other 

 poisons, mixed them with tallow, and inclosed small lumps of 



