However, I Set To Work, And Fitted An Angarep With Arched Hoops
From End To End, So As To Form A Frame Like The Cap Of A Wagon.
This I
covered with two waterproof Abyssinian tanned hides securely strapped;
and lashing two long poles parallel to the sides of the angarep, I
formed an excellent palanquin.
In this she was assisted, and we started
on 23d June.
Our joint parties consisted of about three hundred men. On arrival at
the base of the mountains, instead of crossing them as before, we
skirted the chain to the northwest, and then rounding through a natural
gap, we ascended gradually towards the south.
On the fifth day we were, at 5 A.M., within twelve miles of Obbo, and we
bivouacked on a huge mass of granite on the side of a hill, forming an
inclining plateau of about an acre. The natives who accompanied us were
immediately ordered to clear the grass from the insterstices of the
rocks, and hardly had they commenced when a slight disturbance, among
some loose stones that were being removed, showed that something was
wrong. In an instant lances and stones were hurled at some object by the
crowd, and upon my arrival I saw the most horrid monster that I have
ever experienced. I immediately pinned his head to the ground and
severed it at one blow with my hunting-knife, damaging the keen edge of
my favourite weapon upon the hard rock. It was a puff adder of the most
extraordinary dimensions. I then fetched my measuring-tape from the
game-bag, in which it was always at hand. Although the snake was only 5
ft. 4 in. in length it was slightly above 15 inches in girth. The tail
was, as usual in poisonous snakes, extremely blunt, and the head
perfectly fiat, and about 2 1/2 inches broad, but unfortunately during
my short absence to fetch the measure the natives had crushed it with a
rock. They had thus destroyed it as a specimen, and had broken three of
the teeth, but I counted eight, and secured five poison-fangs, the two
most prominent being nearly an inch in length. The poison-fangs of
snakes are artfully contrived by some diabolical freak of nature as
pointed tubes, through which the poison is injected into the base of the
wound inflicted. The extreme point of the fang is solid, and is so
finely sharpened that beneath a powerful microscope it is perfectly
smooth, although the point of the finest needle is rough. A short
distance above the solid point of the fang the surface of the tube
appears as though cut away, like the first cut of a quill in forming a
pen: through this aperture the poison is injected.
Hardly had I secured the fangs, when a tremendous clap of thunder shook
the earth and echoed from rock to rock among the high mountains, that
rose abruptly on our left within a mile.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 171 of 343
Words from 88431 to 88930
of 178435
