When Fatigued, It Has Often Perched
Within A Few Feet Of Me, And On Such Favourable Opportunities I Have
Surveyed It With The Most Minute Attention.
Its little eyes appear
like diamonds, reflecting light on every side:
Most elegantly
finished in all parts it is a miniature work of our great parent;
who seems to have formed it the smallest, and at the same time the
most beautiful of the winged species.
As I was one day sitting solitary and pensive in my primitive
arbour, my attention was engaged by a strange sort of rustling noise
at some paces distant. I looked all around without distinguishing
anything, until I climbed one of my great hemp stalks; when to my
astonishment, I beheld two snakes of considerable length, the one
pursuing the other with great celerity through a hemp stubble field.
The aggressor was of the black kind, six feet long; the fugitive was
a water snake, nearly of equal dimensions. They soon met, and in the
fury of their first encounter, they appeared in an instant firmly
twisted together; and whilst their united tails beat the ground,
they mutually tried with open jaws to lacerate each other. What a
fell aspect did they present! their heads were compressed to a very
small size, their eyes flashed fire; and after this conflict had
lasted about five minutes, the second found means to disengage
itself from the first, and hurried toward the ditch. Its antagonist
instantly assumed a new posture, and half creeping and half erect,
with a majestic mien, overtook and attacked the other again, which
placed itself in the same attitude, and prepared to resist.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 230 of 291
Words from 62553 to 62827
of 79752
