Travels Of Richard And John Lander Into The Interior Of Africa For The Discovery Of The Course And Termination Of The Niger By Robert Huish
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These Resurrection Men,
As Lander Termed Them, Make, During The Night, A Most Dismal Howling,
And Often Change Their Note To One Very Much Resembling The Shriek Of
A Woman In Some Situation Of Danger Or Distress.
Snakes of the boa species are here found of a most enormous size,
many being from thirty to thirty-six feet in length, and of
proportional girth.
They attack alike wild and domestic beasts, and
often human kind. They kill their prey by encircling it in their
folds, and squeezing it to death, and afterwards swallow it entire;
this they are enabled to do by a faculty of very extraordinary
expansion in their muscles, without at the same time impairing the
muscular action or power. The bulk of the animals which these
serpents are capable of gorging would stagger belief, were the fact
not so fully attested as to place it beyond doubt. The state of
torpor in which they are sometimes found in the woods, after a
stuffing meal of this kind, affords the negroes an opportunity of
killing them. Lander informed us, that there is not in nature a more
appalling sight than one of these monsters in full motion. It has a
chilling and overpowering effect on the human frame, and it seems to
inspire with the same horror every other animal, even the strongest
and most ferocious; for all are equally certain of becoming victims,
should the snake once fasten itself upon them.
The religion of this country is paganism.
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