102 
Snake- Bite and Its Tseatmeni. 
aukle of llie right foot scarified wiüi a kuife iu a, truly ghastly fasMon 
and bound round with a strip of loin-cloth sliowed the spot where the poor 
chap had been bitten. Tlie wliole leg was swollen while the most violent 
cramps convulsed the body of the unconscious man, whom one could 
hardly recognise again owing to the facial expression becoming so dis- 
torted with the fits. As poor Essetamaii>u was crossing the savannah, he 
had trodden on a rattle-snake which lie luid straightway killed with his 
direct and instinctive feeling of revenge: with the insensibility to pain 
so characteristic of the Indian he had only then cut out and bound up the 
wound. As the accideut had taken y)lace on the high-lying savannah, it 
was only with difficulty that he had crawled close to the path, where he 
had hoped he would be found all the quicker, and here he had sunk un- 
rouseious. 
252. As soon as the villagers had seen us hurraing off, and had prob- 
ably also learnt the reason, about half Pirara had foUoAved us : squatting 
around, these gazed in silence upon the unfortunate fellow while his wife 
and children gave way to a heart-rending lament. Judging from the 
coagulated blood, the accident must have taken place several hours 
before : suction or cauterisation was therefore no more applicable, and we 
accordingly just washed out the wound with spirits of ammonia, and 
made him swallow, wliile still senseless, the same stuff diluted. These 
measures did not apparently fail in their effects. Consciousness return- 
ed and com]>laining of pains in Iiis breast and region of the shoulder 
as well as of a dragging in the limbs, and back-ache, he was carried in 
Iiis hammock to Pirara. The leg as far as the hip remained swollen out 
of shape and was completely paralysed for several days: at the same time 
he experienced the most excruciating pains on the slightest movement. 
In three weeks time, with a warm emollient poultice of cassava bread 
the swelling had not only subsided but the corpse-like expression and 
the pains had disappeared: within five weeks the wound had closed and 
the invalid could once more use his foot. 
253. Though the mortal effects of snake-bite can be prevented by 
measures speedily applied, the individual bitten nevertheless bears traces 
of the after-effects throughout the whole of his life, and often succumbs 
to them several years later. The wound generally lu-eaks open again 
every year, and the bitten limb continues to remain the most painful 
weather-prophet. kSeveral of the Pirara villagers were living witnesses 
of this, and an earlier companion of my brother's on his first journey, 
Mr. Vieth, who iu the year 1834 had been bitten on the foot by a Labaria 
{Trigonocephalus atrosc) was still suffering from the effects of the bite 
npon our arrival in the Colony some seven years later. He experienced 
tlie gi-eatest agony on the slightest: chaiige of weather, and the wound 
every time broke out afresh with a veiy evil-smelling continually-moist 
discharge. 
254. In addition to the measures generally applied for snake-bite, 
i.e., excision and suction of the wound as well as fresh sugar-cane juice 
when locally obtainable— the use of which the Indians say is a certain 
cure for poison-arrow A\':ounds— almost every tribe possesses its own par- 
