THE BRUISED SERPENT 175 
grass-covered kennel in the way. But that image 
of the snake, introduced to give a more vivid idea 
of the animal’s action in swerving aside, was 
false; and because of its falseness and the want 
of observation it betrayed, the charm of the 
passage was sensibly diminished. For not once 
or twice, but many scores of times it has happened 
to me, in that very country so graphically de- 
scribed in the book, while travelling at a swinging 
gallop in the bright daylight, that my horse has 
trodden on a basking serpent and has swerved not 
at all, nor appeared conscious of a living, fleshy 
thing that yielded to his unshod hoof. Passing 
on, I have thrown back a glance to see my victim 
writhing on the ground, and hoped that it was 
bruised only, not broken or fatally injured, like 
the serpent of the Roman poet’s simile, over which 
the brazen chariot wheel has passed. Yet if the 
rider saw it—saw it, I mean, before the accident, 
although too late for any merciful action—the 
horse must have seen it. The reason he did not 
swerve was because serpents are very abundant 
in that country, in the proportion of about thirty 
harmless individuals to one that is venomous; con- 
sequently it is a rare thing for a horse to be bitten; 
and the serpentine form is familiar to and excites 
no fear in him. He saw the reptile lying just in his 
way, motionless in the sunlight, “lit with colour like 
a rock with flowers,” and it caused no emotion, and 
was no more to him than the yellow and purple 
blossoms he trampled upon at every yard. 
