IX 



SNAKES 



I have met persons, otherwise quite sane, who told 

 me that they would like to visit India if it were not 

 for the snakes. Now there is something very depress- 

 ing in the thought that this state of mind is extant 

 in England, for it is calculated, on occasion, to have 

 results of a most melancholy nature. By way of 

 example, let us picture the case of a broken-hearted 

 maiden forced to reject an ardent lover because 

 duty calls him to a land where there are snakes. 

 Think of his happiness blighted for ever and her 

 doomed to a " perpetual maidenhood," harrowed 

 with remorseful dreams of the hourly perils and 

 horrors through which he must be passing without 

 her, and dreading to enter an academy or picture- 

 gallery lest a laocoon or a fury might revive appre- 

 hensions too horrible to be borne. In view of 

 possibilities so dreadful, surely it is a duty that a 

 man owes to his kind to disseminate the truth, if 

 he can, about the present condition in the East of 

 that reptile which, crawling on its belly and eating 

 dust and having its head bruised by the descendants 



IOO 



