Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1883-10-19
Eelerf Aeahing.
Snake-Handling In India.

Snake-Handling In India.
Out here, individuals of one sect of
fakirs-religious mendicants-are fire.
quently met with wearing young and
tame phthons as neclaces. Ones uch
animal took the fancy of an officer
and for few rupees was transferred
from the fakir's neck to his; and for
some time both were on good terms.
One day our friend sat down to break
fast with the python round his neck,
"a thing he never before had done; the
tail Of the animal came across the arm
of the chair and instinctively coiled
round it. The leverage thus obtained
seemd to revive its memories of victim
squeezing, and in moment the officer
was in the pangs of strangulation,
bound fast to his chair and the awful
coils of The python around his neck.
But in that supreme moment of hor-
ror appalling he retained his nerve; !;
with his left hand he seized the rep
tiles head, and with bis right grasped
a table knife, and was just able to in
flict a cash behind his head, and then
the sutfocating coils fell back. The
officer was afterwards found PROSTATE
on the floor in dead faint, from which
he only recovered to be seized with
brain fever, the delirium of which
was entirely occupied with encounters
with monstrous serpenis. In course
of time he recovered. but no one could
recognize in that pallid, grey-headed
and careworn shadow of man the
once stalwart, hearty and enthusiastic
sportsman.
Another note to illustrate the ex-
treme danger of handling even dead
snakes, Major Dennys, a police officer
in the central Province, was recently
out shooting and killed a large cobra.
His companion asked to see its poison
fangs, and Major Dennys, seizing the
head with ane hand, opened its jaws
with the other to exhibit the fangs.
which, in the approaching rigidity of
death, closed on his finger. Aware of
his awful risk, he sucked his finger
and fastened home. But all assis-
ance was unavailing; lie died in three
hours
l once kept and freely handled a
snake declared to be innocuous: it es-
capped, and after much searching could
not be found, presently my boy ran
up tears in his eyes, declaring that his
three pet rabbis were all dead; and,
true enough, they were so, and quite
rigid. Coiled up in the hutch was
the missing snake which my boy and
| had so frequently handled!
The handling of snakes is often un-
avoidably forced upon us by the ex-
traordinary and often times inconpre-
hensible positions in which snakes are
frequently encountered. We are apt
to fancy that snake are essentially gro
Yelling creature, forgetting that their
vestral scales give them admirable ia
cilities for climbing. Unless you re-
cognize this fact, it is difficult to un-
derstand how srakes get into the roofs
of up county bungalows, which are
supported by smooth and whitewash-
ed walls and pillars; how you meet
them on the upper shelves of your
bookcases, or in other apparently in
accessible situations.
But when you meet snakes in the
act OF ascending trees, and apparent
ly with nothing to hold on by, you
are resigned to your fate, and are pre-
pared for sanguine encounters any
where and everywhere. If you are a
lady you must not be suprised-as my
wife was-at a deadly snake dropping
out of the sleeves of your velvet jack
ct, which your ayah was helping you
on with, that jacket having previously
hung from wallpeg, leaving it three
or four feet from the ground. Nor,
ST you are going out calling. must
you be astonished if a cobra looks in
upon you from the double roof Of
your brougham. How did the one
snake ascend the smooth wall and get
into the Jacket? How did the other
pass up the smooth and glass like sides
or wheels of the brougham and get into
its double roof?
| might adduce illustrations by the
score of these strange rencontres, aud
they show us how we must always be
on our guard against snakes. Yet it is
marvellous that, among Europeans, we
very rarely hear Of deaths from snake
bite, while the bare feet and legs of
natives leave them frequently and fa-
tally open to attack.-Cambers' jour.
nal.