July 23, 1892.]

He ascended the long stairs with slow and cautious foot. When he had reached the top floor, he unlocked a drawer near his bench, and took therefrom a little box which contained a few silver coins. Putting them in his pocket, he was about to leave the room, when he observed, just where the evening sun streamed warmly in through the dusky pane, the little maid Lucy lying asleep beside her playthings.

Ah, thou here!' he said in a low voice, that had a perceptible quiver in it. He approached, and bent down over the sleeping child. I see it all, my little Lucy. Thou ha' been seeking Uncle Giles, and a-waiting for him till thou ha' fallen asleep.' And as he touched her fair tresses, his first impulse was to raise her up and carry her home-as at other times he would have done. But he dared not do this now. It might frustrate in some way his departure, and he must go. She was safe enough; her nurse was sure to seek and find her here.

Lifting a pair of scissors from the miscellaneous gathering of tools upon the bench, he raised one of the shining locks of the sleeping child, and cut off part of it; then taking from his breast that same little leather case we have before seen, he placed the tress inside, and turned to go. But once more he came back and looked at the child, with something pensive and touching in his eyes. "God bless thee,' he said, 'and keep thee! May thou sometimes think on old Uncle Giles when he be far away.' Then he began to descend the stairs-slowly, with groping hands, and a great mist in his eyes.

He had soon left the valley behind, and was ascending the hill-road by which, only a few months before, he had first entered Linlaven. At the outset he walked quickly, as if dreading observation or interruption; but as he entered the solitude of the broad Fell, he went upward with slow and yet slower steps, turning from time to time to gaze on the village below. The place never looked to him more beautiful than now, under the splendid effulgence of the summer sunset, with the level light gleaming along the mere, and wrapping the high church-tower in a golden glory. All the hills around were bathed in the yellow light; and far beyond he could see the mountains of Westmoreland rising up dark against the kindling west, their broken and serrated ridges gleaming like massive jewels through the soft purple haze.

It could be seen that various and strong emotions had taken possession of the man's soul. For nigh thirty years I ha' fled from my fate, yet it dogs my footsteps as I ha' seen a bloodhound nose the track of a slave.' Yet still he passed upwards, heedless more and more of his surroundings. The wild thyme and the bright-eyed tormentil were at his feet, and around him was the sweet scent of the pines; but they had no charm, because they had no existence, for him. Once over the brow of the Fell, with village and lake and church-tower all hidden from his sight,

misery in tears. Here, among these scenes, he had for a time been tranquil-almost happy; and now, driven forth by the exigencies of his own blighted existence, he must leave them, and for ever. For thirty years, as he numbered it, had he fled before the slow foot of retribution; and yet, here, among those wilds, was not Nemesis coming up with him at last?

Sitting there the moor-birds circling with wild screams round his head, and then darting away with a warning cry-he took no note of time. Suddenly he was aroused out of his reverie by a quick sound that struck upon his ears. It was the bells of Linlaven !

Why should these bells be ringing now? Was it the curfew? No; for they were ringing out in tones harsh and angry. Never, surely, during the three centuries since our Lady of Langleydale brought over these bells from Holland, and hung them in the gray church-tower of Linlavennever had they given forth such clamorous and discordant music. The man started to his feet, and stood for a brief moment listening to that wild alarum, re-echoing and reverberating among the hills.

'It must be fire,' he said, as he turned and ran towards the ridge he had just crossed, and from which Linlaven could be seen. The bells sounded out with a still more angry and dissonant clangour as he came within sight of the valley. The sun had already left it; but the twilight was yet clear along the lake, and he could see a dark cloud of smoke floating ominously in the calm air.

'It is fire he exclaimed. 'And,' in a horrified whisper, as he looked again, it is the Old Grange! And Lucy-my little Lucy-what if they ha' not found her? Oh God,' he cried, in a voice of agony-must yet another sin be laid to my charge? And as he uttered these words he rushed madly down the hill towards the village, dashing onwards with all the recklessness and energy of despair.

ON MAN-EATING REPTILES.

BY DR ARTHUR STRADLING, C.M.Z.S., &c.

THE popular concept of a reptile embodies the very presentment and incarnation of that which is hurtful, repulsive, and, above all, aggressive. Serpents are endowed with venom to enable them to wreak destruction on the human and every other race with which they are brought into contact, or-under the most charitable ascription-are provided with the same as a means of self-defence.' Crocodiles and alligators are always on the chase for man, if they do not prey exclusively upon him; and the minor members of the scaly tribe are regarded with a vague sense of disfavour, grounded, no doubt, on that involuntary antipathy which lies outside the province of reason or the will, but capable, nevertheless, of entertaining any evidence as to their misdeeds with a preconceived readiness to

believe it.

Still, the vast majority of reptiles may safely be pronounced to be innocuous to human beings, poisonous snakes of course constituting one, and

much the greatest, exception. It would be foreign to the purpose of this paper to recapitulate the terrible records of death from the bite of these creatures in India; and in our consideration of reptiles likely to regard us from a dietetic point of view, we may dismiss in their entirety two of the four great orders of reptiles, the lizards and the chelonians. Of the former, there are no bigger existing representatives than the monitors of Africa, India, Malaysia, and Australia, attaining a length of seven feet, fierce in their resentment of interference, and capable of inflicting a nasty wound with their iron teeth, but credited with no more sensational feat than that of occasionally devouring young crocodiles on the Nile; while most certainly the beak of no tortoise or turtle now living on this earth could do more than exhaust its powers for evil in an awkward pinch.

In connection with the question of man-eating, habitual or casual, we have therefore left to us among reptiles of the present day only the crocodilians and pythonoid snakes; and with regard to the former, unhappily their capability admits of no dispute. From every part of the world where these creatures are found, we gather accounts, only too well authenticated, of human beings carried off and devoured by them. It is said that crocodiles kill more people annually in Africa than all the rest of the wild animals of that continent together; but then, the destruction of life by beasts of prey is not very great in Africa compared with what obtains in many other countries. Indeed, it is just possible that the homicidal propensities of alligators and crocodiles, while by no means a fiction, may have been slightly over-rated. At anyrate, I have spent a considerable part of my life in various reptile-ridden countries where the rivers, tanks, and lagoons teemed with these brutes, so potent for good and ill, and have made it my business to hunt up and inquire into cases of the sort; but I have everywhere found those in which definite evidence was forthcoming very few and far between, though in many instances persons had disappeared in such a manner as to suggest a fair inference that they had come by their death in this way. On the other hand, I have seen numerous severe injuries, obviously inflicted by huge crocodilians, limbs crushed and mangled so as even to require amputation, as well as many slighter lacerations, where yet the sufferer, in spite of being so terribly mauled, has been allowed to escape by his assailant. Such cases used to be not at all uncommon amongst the coolies on the cane-pieces in Guiana, where the whole country is intersected by canals,' trenches of muddy water which effectually concealed the ragged jaws lurking beneath the surface; and this is the more curious, seeing that animals once seized rarely if ever escape, even powerful cattle.

Much more difficult to answer is the query, Do snakes eat men? It is hardly necessary to say that the greater Boida, the anaconda of tropical America, the reticulated python and rock-snake of the East Indies, and the African

pythons, some half-dozen species in all, can alone be taken into account in discussing this matter, as no others are of sufficient size to admit of No serpent their swallowing a human being. whatever it takes in the shape of food it must masticates or in any way subdivides its prey; bolt whole and entire; and this peculiarity excludes from our present consideration all the venomous snakes-none of which grow to more formidable dimensions than a length of twelve or fourteen feet at most, with the girth of a man's wrist-as well as the rank and file of the colubrine snakes and smaller constrictors. The boas, which seem to be regarded popularly as synonymous with all that is biggest in the serpent world, are comparatively small reptiles, of exceedingly beautiful coloration, confined to South and Central America, where a specimen of ten feet would be considered worthy of remark.

I believe we have no evidence whatever to

justify us in assuming that these snakes are maneaters, and that there is not a single authenticated instance of the sort on record. One cannot, have specified as the giants of their race may, of course, deny that the constrictors which Í and frequently do, attain such a size as would render them quite capable of the deglutition of an adult human being. The anaconda falls not far short of forty feet in the hot swamps of Brazil and the Isthmus; the West African python has been measured dead at thirty-three; while there is a reticulated python in the London mated at twenty-six feet. No live snake can be Zoological Gardens the length of which is estimeasured with accuracy, because, big or small, it is never seen in a straight line; curiously enough, and probably for the same reason, it always appears very much shorter than it really proves to be when the tape is applied to its dead body, or to its shed slough if cast unbroken. That such monsters as these could swallow men admits of no doubt whatever, any more than that they do occasionally in their wild state feed on deer and other large game. Within a few inches of my pen as I write is a royal python, the smallest species, about five feet long. Two hours ago it ate a dead chicken, half-grown, yet its neck is scarcely thicker than the penultimate joint of my thumb, and has to accommodate spine, muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, windpipe, and many other structures besides the gullet. But I am persuaded that the most gigantic of serpents does not, in its native haunts, habitually take the large prey with which it is credited, and I know that in captivity they thrive infinitely better and live longer if fed on relatively small objects. The anaconda or rock-snake, whose size would permit the constriction and deglutition of an antelope, would probably be found to feed by choice on animals corresponding to rabbits and ducks, though he might affect heavier morsels if hard pressed; small fur and feather, however, would always be the more plentiful and more readily obtained.

There are two stock anecdotes, and only two, which are invariably quoted by writers who contend for the anthropophagous habit, and one of those anecdotes is nearly a hundred years One is that related by M. Gironière, in his Twenty Years in the Philippines, concerning a murderer,

old.

July 23, 1892.]

who had been apprehended by the authorities, but who had succeeded in eluding their vigilance, and, escaping, had hidden himself in a cavern, where his father supplied him with the necessaries of life. On going to the cave one day with rice, he discovered a huge boa (python?) asleep, while the fugitive from justice was nowhere to be seen. He killed the serpent, and found the body of his son within it. The other is an account given in the Bombay Courier of August 31, 1799, to the effect that a Malay proa, making for the port of Amboyna, missed her daylight off Celebes, and anchored there for the night. One of her sailors went on shore to collect betel-nuts in the forest, and, as was afterwards surmised, lay down to sleep on the sea-shore. Cries for help were heard by the crew during the night and they at once put off to the island, where they found the Malay crushed to death by an immense snake, which was preparing to swallow him. But the shouting for assistance is a fatal bar to our accepting the story; no more inconceivably sudden death can befall man or beast than would result from the onslaught of a giant constrictor.

I was present at the post-mortem examination of the body of the unfortunate man Karoli, who was squeezed to death by a python eighteen or twenty feet long in Madrid some years ago. He was performing with the creature wound about him when he chanced to vex it in some way; the brute tightened on him, and with a gasp he fell on the stage. The audience applauded, thinking it was part of the play, but the dompteur was dead. And we found no fewer than eighty-seven fractures of the bones; while lungs, liver, and intestines were split across, all in that one swift, silent, terrible embrace. Squeezed, did I say? Smashed would more fitly convey an idea of what these great reptiles can effect by their sinews of supplest steel; there could be no crying out for aid, nor could aid be of any avail in such a case. Two of my own ribs were broken by a Natal python, the bight' of whose body gripped my side to an extent scarcely more than I can span with my hand. It is remarkable, however, that although many of these snakes are very savage in captivity, and will inflict even serious lacerations by biting, they seem never to put forth their constrictive force as a means of defence or for any other purpose than that of feeding, unless they are held or restrained in some way. A fierce serpent will dash at a fancied aggressor open-mouthed over and over again-I have had my clothes ripped off me by an anaconda which had got loose in a small room-yet they never seem to remember the power of their lateral | muscles until they feel themselves grasped.

A most circumstantial narrative of a maneating serpent in Trinidad appeared in the Portof-Spain Gazette on March 30, 1889, and was extensively copied by newspapers throughout the world, an account so free from the gross exaggeration which characterises most of these stories as to render it apparently worthy of credence. It set forth that on the previous Sunday morning the inhabitants of Arima-a district in the interior of the island-were thrown into a state of consternation by the news that three children had disappeared from the Ward of Guanapo during the past week. The names and residence of these children were given, as well as those of

every one concerned in the matter, down to the minutest corroborative details. Later in the day came the intelligence from Aripo that two more children had been lost, the one on Saturday and the other that same morning; further, that the mother had actually been the terror-stricken eyewitness of the capture of the second by a colossal snake, which had glided off with its victim into the depths of the forest.

A number of inhabitants quickly banded themselves together with the avowed object of destroying the fiend. Dogs were employed, and an attempt was made to track the serpent by scent, without success. The wildest rumours as to its dimensions and crimes began to prevail; but misrepresentation was modestly deprecated, and the length assessed at fifty feet. On the following Tuesday, frenzy was wrought to its highest pitch by a report, subsequently confirmed, that the anaconda had appeared on the heights, and that two more children had been carried off by him.

A hunter had fired two charges of shot into him, the only result of which was to hasten his retreat in the direction of the Morne Bleu Mountains. The warden now thought the news so serious as to induce him to request assistance from the capital, and the Colonial Secretary accordingly despatched a sergeant and six policemen, armed with Martini-Henry rifles, by the afternoon train to Arima, as the guns which the majority of the pursuers carried did not seem to possess sufficient penetrating power to effect the slaughter of an animal endowed with more than feline plurality of lives. At six the next morning a motley cavalcade issued forth towards the Guacharo Caves in the Morne Bleu, where the monster had been marked down' on the previous evening; and here he was found and slain with a dramatic environment of the most picturesque horrors.

The search-party proceeded into one of the caverns as far as the light of day penetrated, walking with noiseless footsteps through a gloom and silence broken only by the sound of a distant waterfall and the mournful cry of the mountain birds. Suddenly their progress was arrested by a deep black pool of water, hardly to be discerned in the dim twilight. The dogs began to howl, and in a few moments they beheld, with vision now accustomed to the obscurity, the huge head of the snake rise above the inky surface, its eyes lighted with a diabolical gleam as it glared at the intruders. The next moment a hiss seethed forth from its jaws, as though a red-hot beam had been plunged in the water. A deafening volley rang out from the levelled guns, displacing large masses of stone overhead, which actually wounded some of the party. This, however, did not give the Minotaur his quietus, for, rearing himself twenty feet on high, and rapidly uncoiling his length from the depths of the pool, he launched himself forward, with his body bent in a great curve, on his assailants. A second discharge, however, produced the desired effect; the snake leaped out of the pool, and lashing the floor and the surface of the water, died in terrific convulsions. He was found to measure forty-seven feet, with a diameter of two and a half, the described colour accurately indicating an anaconda. Opened on the spot by the knives of some cocoa-pruners, it was found that

all traces of the children had disappeared; but the half-digested body of a deer, probably swallowed on the previous day, was disentombed, along with a number of official papers, conjecturally the relics of some unhappy overseer. The carcase of the serpent was then skinned, and the bones extracted for exhibition in the Council Hall of Port-of-Spain.

No contradiction of this extraordinary story seems to have reached any of the European or American papers which had quoted it; but my friend Dr Knox, of San Fernando, sent me the sequel. A couple of days after the publication of the narrative, crowds of people from far and near came flocking in to the Council Hall to view the hide and skeleton of this Brobdingnagian reptile, that being the date fixed for its arrivalonly to find that the whole affair was a hoax, and to be reminded that the day was the first of April!

Quite recently a well-known venomous snake, the hamadryad (Ophiophagus elaps), has been amplified into a man-eater in certain forests of Ganjam, where, it is declared by the Khonds and Uriyas, who hold it in such dread that nothing will induce them to enter some of the woods, to attain a length of thirty feet, and to add not only human beings which it is said to pursue with relentless activity-but jackals, wolves, leopards, and sambur to its normal diet of snakes.

In conclusion, let me give two possible instances as they were given to me of serpents devouring very young children. A friend of mine, whose bona fides I could not for one moment doubt, a man well known in the world of science, though not a zoologist, assured me that he had seen the tiny dead body of a newborn baby seized by a snake as it lay exposed on the steps of a church in a remote village of Southern Italy. He had passed the spot but a few minutes before, when the screams of a boy caused him to retrace his steps, and then he perceived a large striped serpent, which had plunged its widely distended jaws over the naked shoulder of the child. Sticks and stones caused it to loosen its hold, and it flashed away into the bushes. The biggest of the European snakes, the beautiful four-rayed Elaphis, is certainly found in that locality, but it grows to no more than six feet, and is of slender habit. My friend did not profess to have noted the appearance of the reptile sufficiently to enable him to describe

it.

The other story comes from Manila. When I was there, many years ago, there was a poor crazy mestiza, or half-breed, who was quite a noted character in the island. She lived in one of the Tagal huts outside the city on the muddy Pasig River, but was not unfrequently to be met in the canopied side-walks of the streets, or wandering along the calzada in the evening, when that beautiful drive and promenade is thronged with carriages and pedestrians, enjoying the strains of the military band and the sea-breeze. This woman was a withered, shrivelled creature, who might have been sixty, seventy, or a hundred years old; but it was currently reported and I can well believe it-that she was little more than thirty. Her wants were sufficiently provided for, and a certain amount of supervision was exercised over her movements; but every

now and then she escaped from a not very stringent control, and roanied through the length and breadth of Luzon, usually returning of her own accord after an absence of weeks, or even months, though occasionally rescued and brought back by those who encountered her and knew her.

Her one passion in life and the object of her wanderings was to catch snakes. These she would seize upon unhesitatingly wherever she met with them and probably few knew their haunts better than she-and would keep them twisted about her, tied with plaited grass to her wrists or around her neck, or folded in the hem of her scanty saya, where she would talk to them, scold them, beat them, caress them, according to her mood, all day long, until they succeeded in regaining their freedom. On more than one occasion she had returned thus decorated to the Indian quarter, causing no little consternation; and it was even said that she had been responsible for a general stampede from the great Chinese store in the Calle Escolto, the Regent Street of Manila, by appearing at one of the doorways chattering to a huge poisonous snake. I was conducted to her hut by a Dominican friar who had described to me a serpent which he had recently seen in her hands, and which seemed to me to be a specimen of the rare and deadly Ophiophagus. Our tedious journey up the bewildering maze of fetid creeks which extend away to the base of the mountains was, however, fruitless, for neither mestiza nor snake was to be found in the nipa-thatched tenement. I learned from the friar that one of her arms, one leg, and her jaw had been broken by falls in the course of her snake-hunting rambles, and had remained permanently deformed from the want of surgical treatment; but that she was not known to have been bitten by any of the ill-omened protégés she handled so unceremoniously.

Concerning this woman I was told a tale of horror. True or false, no one in Manila appeared to question its accuracy. At the age of fifteen, when she was an exceedingly beautiful girl, she married a Spaniard high in office in the port, a member of one of the old 'Peninsular' families, who found it hard to forgive such a mésalliance. (This, I may remark, would possibly account for her position at the time of my visit, watched and cared for to a certain extent by an ample provision of money, but a pariah none the less.) A few weeks after the birth of her first child, she was taken, for the sake of her health, to a quinta or villa in the mountains, to escape the excessive heat and noisome smells of the city and low-lying foreshore, her husband's official duties compelling him to remain at their residence in the town. One afternoon she was sitting in a low rockingchair, placed in a shady corner of the veranda which ran round two sides of the quinta, commanding an extensive view of the glorious bay far below; her Indian maid lay asleep on the floor, and she, with the baby, now a month old, in her lap, presently succumbed to the heat of the day, and slept too-slept long and heavily. She heard no sound; she was disturbed by no movement; but she woke suddenly, to find her baby gone, and an enormous python lying gorged at her feet. As she sprang from the chair, the snake struck her on the breast, inflicting a jagged