The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-06-12

his scientific appellation is nearly as
 long as himself, being Craspedocephalus
 lanceolatus He seems to cherish an
 implacabe hatred toward man and beast, and not only lies in wait for prey,
 but will go out of his way to murder The rattler of our Northern Wilds is a harmless plaything compared to him,
 for the former at least gives notice Of his intention to strike and his poison 1 may generally be counteracted by
 prompt amputation and free use Of whiskey. But for the bite of the fer-de- | lance there is no antidote, The victim
 not only dies a horrible death within a
 few minutes, but decomposition follows, almost before the breadth has left the body. Sir Richard Schomburgh, in his Travels in British Guiana" tells of q
 tragedy which he, himself witnessed. A spedocephalus, coiled on a stone in ' the ford, let fourteen men walk over , him, without stirring or letting himself
 be seen, and then struck the beautiful
 Indian bride, "Leibling der ganzen l Gesellschaft." She died in her bride
 groonl's arms with horrors unwriteable, and within the half hour the blackened | flesh had dropped in chunks from her bones. They will tell you to-day in Santa Lucia that forty grains of quin- inc, mixed with the juice of two lemons, if administered at once, will sometimes save life but is likely to leave the Vic- tim paralyzed. Another remedy is a pint of olive oil, followed by pint Of bay rum; and after the heroic dose vapor bath. But the grim fact remains that nobody living can vouch for a cure
 and so universal is the fear of the rom
 lance-which lies along the branches Of
 trees, ready to spring upon passers-by
 invades the cane-fields and orchards,
 and even turks in garden walks, that
 people living in the suburbs of the city
 seldom venture from their houses after
 nightfall. It is not so singular then, as
 at first appears to you, that the natives
 make household pets of the cribo-a
 great, ugly-looking snake, about eight
 feet long, but perfectly harmless, which
 is the only living thing against which
 the fur de-lance has no power. The
 cribo-a relative of our common Water-
 snake is jet black, with more or less
 bright yellow along the belly and tail.
 In every house of Santa Lucia One is
 sure to be found asleep in the thatch,
 coiled up in corner, or perhaps sun-
 ming himself in the doorway as much
 at home and as cherished as the pet cat
 in the North, Should an "iron-lance'
 dare to show his fiendish, triangular shaped head near the territory of MT. Cribo, the latter instantly challenges his arch enemy to mortal combat; and in- 1,I vi,
 Strange to say, the fur-de-lance is found in none of the West India islands except Santa Lucia, Martinique and Guadaloupe; and the mystery is how he ever came there, his nearest home being in Guiana on the coast of South Ameri- ca. If it is true, as some scientists in- sist, that these islands were once joined i to the main continent and that he trav eled by land to the places he now in | fests in such numbers, why did he skip | all the islands between Guiana and Santa Lucia? Even Trinidad only a | few miles from the South American | coast is as innocent of them as Ireland f was of snakes of any sort after St, Pat rick's visit. For some unknown reason the freaky iron-lance refuses to live in
 
 that during the Carlo war of 1795 the savages imported lot of young fur de- lances, from Santa Lucia nto St. Vincent, and turned them loose, hoping that they would destroy the white men, but in a few weeks every snake died, The experiment was sev- aral times repeated and the result was always the same Yet in Santa Lucia they thrive so well and are so actively hostile to man that hundreds of people Ire killed by them every year and the phrase, The died of the serpent" is as commonly heard as "he died of fever" An Englishman who recently cleared a piece of land near Castries says that lis workmen killed upwards of forty at-tals' during the first week.
 Santa Lucia is evidently of volcanic ,rigin. the whole island having a rag red and mountainous surface and sev- ,ral of the fantastic heights showing raters that have been active at cOm- ,aratively recent period. From one of hem (the Souffrere) sulphurous vapors Ire constantly rising. and it contains ulphur enough, ready made, to keep he world in gunpowder for generations O come Some thirteen years ago two came over from Antigua sland and set up sulphur works in San a Lucia's Souffriere. They exported 50 tons the first year; and then the isl- and sugar planters took alarm, fear ng that the new industry would divert abor from their estates. They induced | he Legislative Council of the British stands to levy a tax of sixteen shillings terling on every ton of purified sul- hur; and the consequence was ruin Q the suIphur-miners, who had to bandon their works and machinery.
 The greater part of the island, noun aims and all, is covered with dense and loomy forest; but the valleys and low r heights are remarkably productive nd we'll cultivated. The population of le island approximates forty thousand, lostly French and negroes Just why anta Lucia should be so frightfully l amid all this beauty of i'll and dale, with charming climate eternal June. cooled by ocean reezes, is not apparent to the casual oserver. It is probably traceable to le extreme rankness and rapid decay vegetation. All the forests are set aep in oxious swamps, where nature, lough inconceivably beautiful is dark, lmp and threatening and where every ny,I NiY,or 5r