agonies from the bite. Much depends on the
constitution of the individual, and something
on the part they attack. It is particularly unpleasant
to get one down your back, and to find
him trying to eat his way through you in half a
dozen places. Some time ago I asked a dear old
friend of mine, who used to rejoice in a grizzly
beard, what he had done with it. " Shaved it
off." " Why?" " Because a brute of a centipede
got into it, and there he was, biting away,
and I could not catch him."

I was staying at the house of a friend holding
high office in the northern province, when, one
evening after a shower of rain, he proposed to
show me a few of the gentry that were in the
habit of taking refuge with him when driven
out of their own holes. He had seen one in
the room a short while before, and had deferred
killing him until I should come to be gratified.
The specimen was an enormous black scorpion:
a most disgusting brute, the impersonification
of every hateful quality. He despatched him
with a stiffish whip he kept for the purpose—
the best thing to use, as it is pliable, and bends
over a snake or other creature, while a stick can
only touch him in one part. We then pursued
our investigations. He laid hold of a door
behind which something might be found, but
immediately drew it back, for he had all but
touched a large tarantula: another most unsightly
beast. Elsewhere in the room we found
one centipede, and in the verandah another;
we then sat down by a table, and were chatting
about the number of venomous animals we so often
come across without their hurting us, and telling
various small stories bearing on the subject,
when suddenly I felt a sharp pair of claws seizing
my foot. I jumped up with an exclamation,
expecting to find a scorpion, "Only a black
beetle!" I must admit that I never before or
after saw so many vermin, at one time, in a
house. It was a house but little raised from
the ground, and the rain had driven the creatures
out of their holes.

As to snakes, they will always get out of one's
way if they can. Every one can speak of some
narrow escape, and yet it seldom happens that
any one is bitten. Twice, on nearly the same
spot, did I drive over a deadly snake. It was
near a coral wall at Point Pedro. One snake
was a cobra, the other a tic polonga. My wife
one day opened a drawer, and was going to put in
her hand, when she saw a venomous snake lying
coiled up in a basket. She remained quiet, and I
despatched him with a stick. Some years previous,
when still unmarried, she and another
young lady, scrambling about the rocks at
Trincomalee, at a pic-nic, found their feet within
the coils of a python, which they had inadvertently
disturbed in his sleep. The narrowest
escape I ever had was at Point Pedro, where I
placed my foot on a cobra di capella, and actually
stood on him for an instant, while I could
hear him beating the ground with the rest of
his body. I suppose I must have trodden
on his neck, so that he was unable to bite. It
was in the evening, and two men who had
preceded me a few yards, carrying a table which
they were going to place in the open air, must
have walked right over him. As soon as I
discovered what I was standing on, I sprang
forward, and called out, " I have trodden on a
snake!" A light was brought, but nothing was
to be seen, except the "trail" of a snake on the
ground. After the house had been closed for the
night, when I was going to bed, I saw a snake
coiled up near a door. I went for a stick and
despatched him. It turned out to be a cobra,
between four and a half and five feet long.
Evidently he had taken refuge within the house
after I had trodden on him, and lay quiet behind
the door. He had remained there without
moving, while my wife and myself had been
drinking some lemonade at a table within a
few feet of where he lay. He had remained
quiet and unnoticed when the servant shut the
door, although he must have been exposed to
light. And there he still was when my eye fell
on him.

This dulness of many venomous snakes is
a merciful arrangement, by which many a life is
spared. The rat-snake, a harmless creature,
very like the cobra, but without a hood, is a
very active snake, and moves away with great
rapidity. A house which we occupied a few
months ago was much infested by snakes.
Standing on the verandah one afternoon I saw
a cobra deliberately move towards the house.
Of course I at once put an end to him.
Remembering what Sir Emerson Tennent says
about snakes of this kind being generally found
in couples, I was not surprised by the breathless
announcement my little girl made on my return
home some days afterwards. There was a fine
banyan-tree in front of the house, into which
the children used to climb and regale themselves
with imaginary breakfasts—sumptuous curries
of all kinds, sambals of delicious flavour, and
other luxurious dishes, really made of gravel
served up in cocoa-nut shells. It appeared that
as they were there regaling themselves on one
of these gorgeous repasts, Fanny had spied a
cobra: on which they scrambled down the tree
and alarmed the household, and the cook
valiantly broke a door-bar over the cobra, and
then dragged him by the tail out of a hole into
which he was creeping; after which he was (I
suppose from the natural love cooks have for
roasting and boiling) cast into the fire and burnt.
His head was, however, raked out of the ashes
by the small fry, in corroboration of their story,
and triumphantly shown me.

I used to be under the impression that if
timely measures were taken, the effects of a
snake-bite could always be averted; but the
following melancholy instance shows that sometimes
death ensues almost immediately. A groom
and his wife were sleeping in the stable of a
friend of mine, when a cobra bit the woman in
the head. Probably the reptile had coiled himself
near her for warmth, and the woman had, in
her sleep, disturbed him. Immediately, the man
carried her into his master's house; but before
she had been in the room five minutes, death ensued.