We Are
Much Indebted To Doctor Fagren For The Exhaustive Researches He Has Made
Into The Action Of Snake-Poison
And its remedy - the result of which the
reader can find in his elaborately got-up volume, entitled "The
Thanatophidia
Of India" - and on looking over the concise directions given
by him for immediate use in the event of such an accident, I do not see
that we could possibly have done more than we did, considering the limited
material we had at our command. Perhaps, had it been a white man, with a
strong constitution, he would have pulled through; for the settled
conviction that he was doomed, doubtless accelerated the death of the black
boy; but the action of the poison is so rapid, that most cases terminate
fatally. Two instances I know of, in which the patient recovered. The
first was an Irish labourer, who whilst reaping took up a snake, which bit
him in the finger. He walked at once to the fence, put his hand on a post,
and severed the wounded member with his sickle. Irishman-like, he forgot
to move the sound fingers out of the way, and two of them shared the fate
of their injured companion. Paddy walked into the nearest township, had
his wounds dressed, and felt no inconvenience from the venom. Under the
soubriquet of "Three-fingered Tim," this individual may frequently be met
with at Sydney, and, for a glass of grog, will be delighted to recount the
whole affair, with the richest of Milesian brogues. The second case was
that of a woman. She was going from the hut to the fireplace, when she
trod on a snake, which bit her just below the joint of the little toe; for,
like Coleridge's Christabel -
"Her blue-veined feet unsandall'd were."
She was in a terrible position; her husband, and the other man for whom she
acted as hut-keeper, had both gone out with their flocks some hours
previously, and there was nobody about but a poor half-witted lad, who hung
about the place doing odd jobs. She was a resolute woman, and made up her
mind how to act, in far less time than it takes me to set it down on paper.
Coo-ehing for the lad, she went into the hut, and came out again with a
sharp tomahawk and an axe.
"Take this," she said, handing the latter to the boy, "and strike hard on
the back of it when I tell you."
Thus speaking, she placed her foot on a log of wood, adjusted the keen edge
of the tomahawk so that when struck it would sever the toe and the portion
of the foot containing the bite, and, holding the handle of the tomahawk
steady as a rock, with firm determination gave the words -
"Now, Jim, strike!"
It needed three blows from the back of the axe to complete the operation,
for the poor lad grew frightened at the sight of the blood; but the
undaunted woman encouraged him, nerved him to a fresh trial, and guided the
tomahawk as coolly as if she were cutting up a piece of beef, until the
shocking task was completed. With Jim's assistance, she then bound up the
foot to arrest the bleeding, and, accompanied by him, rode ten miles into
the township, and, need I say, in due course recovered.
In these instances the reader will see that the measures taken were both
prompt, and such as would require more nerve than is possessed by the
ordinary run of mortals. In the above cases, also, the bitten part was
capable of being removed; but for a bite on the wrist, had such an extreme
measure as immediate dismemberment been performed, the cure would have been
as fatal as the disease.
Poor Dunmore was terribly cut up at the premature death of his follower;
Lizzie, having smothered her head with fluffy feathers from some cockatoos
that had been roasted for supper, employed herself in chanting a most weird
kind of dirge over the body, to which she beat a species of accompaniment
on the bottom of a pint pot; while Ferdinand, by Dunmore's directions, had
set to work to strip a sheet of bark off a tea-tree, to act as a rude
coffin. A great difficulty now presented itself, for we had no tools
whatever, and how could we dig a grave? In such hard ground, knives would
make no impression, and the body must be buried deeply, or it would be
rooted up by the dingoes, whose howl we could plainly hear around us, as
they bayed at the moon. We spread ourselves out in different directions,
in the hope of finding some rift or recess that would answer the purpose,
but in the imperfect light, we failed to discover anything, so were
compelled to wait for dawn. I do not think any of us slept much. One of
our little party suddenly snatched away in so unforeseen a manner, gave us
all food for reflection - for which of us knew that the same fate would
not befall him to-morrow? When I dropped off into a slumber, it was so
light and broken, that I seemed to be conscious of Lizzie, continuing her
melancholy drone, and battering monotonously on the tin pannikin, nor was I
surprised when in the morning I ascertained that such had really been her
occupation all night; for the purpose of keeping the body from harm, she
avowed, but, I am inclined to think, much more from fear of sleeping in the
neighbourhood of a dead body, for the blacks are dreadfully superstitious,
and frightened to death of ghosts.
At daylight we were lucky enough to find a tree that had been blown down in
the late hurricane, leaving a hollow where its roots had been torn out of
the ground. In this natural grave we laid the poor trooper, wrapped in his
bark shell, and, having raised a pile of stones upon the spot, of such
dimensions as to preclude the probability of the body being disturbed by
dingoes, we went on our way, silent and melancholy.
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