The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-11-24
SNAKES IN DUTCH GUIANA.
Many Lives Are Lost in the Jungle on
 Account of the Carelessness of the

Many Lives Are Lost Tn the JuhSle oH
 Account of the Carelessness of the
 Blacks.
 Speaking of Snakes said mining
 engineer. T do not think there is spot
 on the face of this earth to equal Dutch
 Guiana in that respect. There they
 have large snakes and small snakes,
 red snakes and green snakes, amber
 colored snakes and gold snakes snakes
 harmless and snakes deadly round- | headed snakes and flat-headed snakes,
 and snakes ranging through the entire
 list of colors from mud gray to striped
 orange and red.
 If you are tender foot in the coun-
 try. before you leave Paramaribo for
 the gold fields in the jungle the natives ! will warn you against the snakes, on
 the way to the fields, 400 miles up the
 river in a canoe, you can shoot dozen
 or more water snakes, if you are watch
 ful. Once in camp, and accustomed to
 precautions, before you get into your I hammock at night you turn 1t inside out to oust a possible parrot snake that may have taken kindly to your bed.
 During the night, if you are called up-
 on to leave camp you pick your way along the jungle trail with lantern
 held low to light every inch your feet traverse. In the morning when you come to the embers of your camp fire you will find a bunch of snakes curled up around one another to keep off the chill of the night in the warm ashes. And so it is, snakes, snakes, snakes.
 Through 46,000 square miles of jungle it Is one continuous snake paradise. Barring death by jungle fever, more miners and prospectors are annually taken off by snake bites than by any other cause. Human life in that coun- try means less than it does here, and so it is that mine owners do not compel their negroes to wear shoes and so it is also that in the brushwood surround ing some of the older camps there are scattering mounds bearing neither name nor inscription, but pointed out occasionally by veteran miners as the place of 80 and So poor devil, bitten by snake
 "One of the mose gruesorne sights ever witnessed was an attack by vul- lures on the body of dead snake, We were pulling up the Saramacca IINtI pllG d-LclitDIl III e illlllillS bOdt A dozen negroes were pulling their hearts out on the oars trying to yanl1 the heavy boat around a sharp bend against a rushing current, Foot by foot the boat crawled along, hugging close to the shore under a maze of overhanging bushes. The naked black backs of the rowers dripped perspira- ton till their ebony hides glistened as if sreased with oil.
 Suddenly black streak shot down from the brush and with a curse and 1 cry of pain the bow oar dropped | his oar and elutched his upper arm. | Instantly there was confusion, and l amid a confused iabber of Dutch ne- gro dialect the boat drifted backward. | There stretched across the top of the | bushes, summing himself, as if nothing | had happened, lay a long snake with | a black, shiny back and an orange | coored belly. The fellow seemed | all of twelve to fourteen feet long. | He languidly raised his head for a look | at the intruders, but that same in- | stant there was shot, The head l dropped and the snake lay still We left him there intending to pick him up olI lilC Ncj liOlilC u Stl HIS Sk1n.
 About two miles away there was a speck of a vu1ture soaring in circles l high in the air. We went our way. Ten minutes later there were five specks about one mile away soaring high in the air. We had not bucked | another half mile before We had given up hopes of the snake skin. The bug zards had increased to a dozen in number and were darting directly over the dead snake as if to make sure that his life was extinct. Then, amid 1 screeches, there was a combined de- scent In minute they rose, their beaks fastened into long, limp car cass. Higher and higher they carried their gruesome load, till high up in the blue sky tug of war began. The snake was torn into sections. One lf these fell. Before it had gone ] hundred feet one of the birds shot after it. The caught his morsel be- fore it had fallen another hundred feet. Then he retired among the angle of forest, as did the other vul-