Seen and Lost. 



377 



dead, and red as rust, and filling the hot blue sky 

 with silvery down — it was with a very strange 

 feeling. The change from the green and living to 

 the dead and dry and dusty was so great ! There 

 seemed to be something mysterious, extra-natural, 

 in that low level plain, so green and fresh and 

 snaky, where my horse's hoofs had made no sound 

 — a place where no man dwelt, and no cattle 

 pastured, and no wild bird folded its wing. And 

 the serpents there were not like others— the' 

 mechanical coiled-up thing we know, a mere bone- 

 and-muscle man-trap, set by the elements, to spring 

 and strike when trodden on : but these had a high 

 intelligence, a lofty spirit, and were filled with a 

 noble rage and astonishment that any other kind of 

 creature, even a man, should venture there to disturb 

 their i sacred peace. It was a fancy, born of that 

 sense of mystery which the unknown and the 

 unusual in nature wakes in us — an obsolescent 

 feeling that still links us to the savage. But the 

 simple fact was wonderful enough, and that has 

 been set down simply and apart from all fancies. 

 If the reader happens not to be a naturalist, it is 

 right to tell him that a naturalist cannot exaggerate 

 consciously; and if he be capable of unconscious 

 exaggeration, then he is no naturalist. He should 

 hasten " to join the innumerable caravan that 

 moves " to the fantastic realms of romance. Look- 

 ing at the simple fact scientifically, it was a case of 

 mimicry — the harmless snake mimicking the fierce 

 threatening gestures and actions proper to some 

 deadly kind. Only with this difference : the 

 venomous snake, of all deadly things in nature, is 



