SOUTH AMERICA. 
11 
are large, beautiful, and formidable. The rattlesnake first 
° ^ , JOURNEY. 
seems partial to a tract of ground known by the “ 
name of Canal Number-three; there the effects of 
his poison will be long remembered. 
The Camoudi snake has been killed from thirty 
to forty feet long ; though not venomous, his size 
renders him destructive to the passing animals. The 
Spaniards in the Oroonoque positively affirm that he 
grows to the length of seventy or eighty feet, and 
that he will destroy the strongest and largest bull. 
His name seems to confirm this; there he is called 
u matatoro,” which literally means “ bull-killer.” 
Thus he may be ranked amongst the deadly snakes; 
for it comes nearly to the same thing in the end, 
whether the victim dies by poison from the fangs, 
which corrupts his blood and makes it stink hor¬ 
ribly, or whether his body be crushed to mummy, 
and swallowed by this hideous beast. 
The whipsnake of a beautiful changing green, and 
the coral with alternate broad transverse bars of black 
and red, glide from bush to bush, and may be handled 
with safety; they are harmless little creatures. 
The Labarri snake is speckled, of a dirty brown 
colour, and can scarcely be distinguished from the 
ground or stump on which he is coiled up; he grows 
to the length of about eight feet, and his bite often 
proves fatal in a few minutes. 
Unrivalled in his display of every lovely colour 
of the rainbow, and unmatched in the effects of his 
deadly poison, the counacouchi glides undaunted on, 
sole monarch of these forests; he is commonly known 
