A Nest With Freshly-Laid Eggs
Is A Glorious Find, For Several Dozen Are Frequently Extracted, And Are
Most Delicious Eating.
The evening was fast approaching, when we camped for the night by the side
of a nice clear water-hole in a sequestered valley, and, after bathing and
having tea, we tried our luck at fishing, for these holes are sometimes
full of eels.
We prospered, and soon had several fine fellows on the bank,
from whence they were speedily transferred to the hot ashes, and roasted in
their integrity; they were thus spared the skinning, to which, it is
averred, custom has habituated them. Ferdinand and Cato were collecting
firewood for the night, for, in the position we had selected, we were not
afraid of making a good blaze, and we were sitting and lounging round the
fire, conjecturing what had become of all the blacks, and how soon we
should fall in with the other party, when Lizzie - who had accompanied the
troopers - came rushing back, and said: -
"One fellow snake been bit 'em Cato; plenty that fellow go bong (dead)
by-and-by, mine believe."
We all jumped up, and sure enough, poor Cato came slowly towards us,
looking the ashy-grey colour to which fear turns the black, and followed by
Ferdinand, who dragged after him a large black snake, the author of the
mischief.
If Australia is exempt from wild beasts, the number of venomous reptiles
with which it is cursed make it as dangerous to the traveller as other
tropical countries in which ferocious animals abound. Hardly a tree or a
shrub can be found that does not contain or conceal some stinging
abomination. The whole of these are not, of course, deadly, but a
tarantula bite, or a centipede sting, will cripple a strong man for weeks,
while a feeble constitution stands a fair chance of succumbing. But of all
these pests, none can equal the snakes, which not only swarm, but seem to
have no fear of man, selecting dwellings by choice for an abode. These
horrible reptiles are of all sizes, from the large carpet snake of twenty
feet, to the little rock viper of scarcely half a dozen inches. The great
majority of these are venomous, and are of too many different kinds for me
to attempt their enumeration here. The most common with us were the brown,
black, and whip snakes, and the death-adder, all poisonous; and the
carpet-snake, harmless. The brown and black snakes run from two to eight
feet in length, frequent the long grass, chiefly in the neighbourhood of
swamps, and from the snug way in which they coil up, and their
disinclination to move, are highly dangerous. The latter is very handsome,
the back of a brilliant black, and the under portion of a sea-shell pink.
Their skin is sometimes used by bushmen as a cover to their waistbelts,
which are much beautified thereby. The whip-snakes are of all sizes and of
all colours; in fact, under this name the colonists include all the slender
climbing snakes, so many of which inhabit Australia.
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