26 



Idle Days in Patagonia. 



Not until the sun was an hour up did my friend 

 return to me to find me hopeful still, and witli all 

 my faculties about me, but unable to move without 

 assistance. Putting his arms around me he helped 

 me up, and just as I had got erect on my sound leg, 

 leaning heavily on him, out from beneatli the 

 poncho lying at my feet glided a large serpent of 

 a venomous kind, the Craspedocephalus alternatus, 

 called in the vernacular the scrprnt loifli a cross. 

 Had my friend's arms not been occupied with sus- 

 taining me ho, no doubt, would have attacked it with 

 the first weapon that offered, and in all probability 



Serpent with i\ Cross. 



killed it, with the result that [ should have suffered 

 from a kind of vicarious remorse ever after. For- 

 tunately it was not long in drawing its coils out of 

 sight and danger into a hole in the wall. My 

 hospitality had been unconscious, nor, until that 

 moment, had I known that something had touched 

 me, and that virtue had gone out from me ; but T 

 rejoice to think that the secret deadly creature, 

 after lying all night with me, warming its chilly 

 blood with ni}' warmth, went back unbruised to its 

 den. 



