Belington progressive. [volume] (Belington, W. Va.) 1912-1927, 1923-05-24
MADE Them OBEY
Remarkable Power Exercised
Over Reptiles by Egyptian.
lamentations Apparently Made Deadly
Creatures Responsive to His Will,
and Harmless.


writes correspondent from Luxor to
the London Times. He drove with us
from Luxor, sitting on the box seat of
one of the carriages with a basket in
his hand which he sufficiently satisfied
us was empty: a little man and
swarthy, with a bristling, untrimmed
moustache, lean-faced and quick of
movement, as perhaps you have to be
in dealing with cobras and scorpions
and such. Dressed In black, with q
white turban ON his head, carrying a
longish cane in his hand, he led the
Wayne five English following-amid
the rubbish heaps and piles of broker
masonry and old mud bricks which lit
ter the dusty plain about the temple of
Karnak. AS he walked he harangued
the world at large, chanting in high
pitched monotone texts, we we're told,
from the Koran. and powerful incanta-
tons taught him by his grandfather.
A great man must his grandfather
have been. He learned all his lore
from Hakim Syed Suleiman himself
sheik so potent that every snake and
scorpion in Egypt knows and trembles
at his name today.
Calling cur attention to particular
hole among heaped bits of masonry the
little man attacked the orifice from
afar with the point of his stick, thrust
ing at II angrily, chipping the sides,
stirring the dust before it. Then, adj
vancing gingerly and with his flowing
sleeves pushed back to leave his lean
arms bare, reaching out, he picked
6elicately out Of that dust, by the ex-
IRENE tip of its tail a wriggling
scorpion.
ut was not large one, but large
enough-some four or five inches long
over all, greenish-yellow, semi-trans-
lucent, horrid thing. For while
Moussa played with 1t for our benefit,
letting It do It's best to sting tie cal
loused tip Of his thumb and making It
sit motionless at the word Of command
In Suleimans dreaded name. Then he
placed it on a stone, whence 1t prompt
ly scuttled away. More scorpions fol
lowed, with the same pantomime in
every case Along the old mud-brick
wall of the Romans, full on the face
of which the sun was beating, the
perhaps three and one-half feet long,
hauled struggling out of hole in the
old wall and flung upon the sand at
our feet. We were assured that 1t was
abominably poisonous, but from the
shape Of its head II looked as harmless
as q grass snake at home.
"AgaIn he smelled something;
smelled 1t from afar-something big
perhaps cobral And presently be-
fore a group Of three holes close to-
gether in the wall he stopped with
very fury of exhortation. Every charm
that his grandfather ever knew must
surely have been invoked as the little
man threatened and commanded and
thrashed at the wall with his stick
"After thrusting his stick into one
hole after another, he conveyed to us
that the three were connected inside
the wall, and the snake, he gave us to
understand, was lodging him from one
to another. At last he seemed to have
cornered his prey and, reaching his
bare arm almost to the shoulder deep
into one Of the black openings he drew
out, the reptile doing its best to resist,
struggling cobra getting on for five
feet long. It was certainly formida-
Bile looking thing as 1t slid this way
and that over the sand or stopped to
rear its head and expand its hood
like a uraeus of one Of the old Egyp-
tian kings come to life.
1.-The creature, thus unprepared, its
black tongue Pickering in and out of
its narrow slit of mouth, Moussa,
STOPPING down before it, slowly
reached out his hand. Very gradually,
almost imperceptibly, he brought it
nearer and nearer to that wicked-look-
ing head until it was but six inches
away, plainly within striking distance
Then gently, as If in exhausted sur
render, the serpent reached forward
and softly laid it's head in the up
turned palm. 1t was an extraordinarily
dramatic curtain to the play"