382 
SPANISH TOWN. 
ceived his specimens, you may the better apply your 
information to your conclusions, particularly when 
you shall take into account the Jamaica facts I am 
now about to relate to you. 
‘‘ It was, I think, on Easter- eve, the 30th of 
March last, that some youngsters of the town came 
running to me to tell me of a curious Snake, unlike 
any snake they had ever before seen, which young 
Cargill had shot, when out for a day’s sport among 
the woodlands of a neighbouring penn. They de- 
scribed it as in all respects a serpent, but with a very 
curious shaped head, and with wattles hanging on 
each side of its jaws. After taking it in hand and 
looking at it, they placed it in a hollow tree intend- 
ing to return for it, when they should be coming 
home, but they had strolled from the place so far 
that it was inconvenient to retrace their steps, when 
wearied with rambling; but they had lost no time 
in relating the adventure to me, knowing it would 
interest me much, particularly as young Cargill’s 
father had thought it a snake similar to the one he 
had seen at Skibo in St. George’s, or to the crested 
serpent, for a specimen of which, when in St. Thomas’s 
in the East, he had offered the sum of twenty shil- 
lings. The youth that shot the snake fell ill on the 
following morning with fever, and could not go back 
to the w'oodlands to seek it, but he sent his younger 
brother who had been with him ; but although 
he thought he rediscovered the tree in which his 
brother had placed it, he could not find the Snake. 
He conjectured the rats had devoured it in the night. 
When this adventure was related to me, another 
youth, Ulick Ramsay, a godson of mine, who came 
