CERASTES, or HORNED VIPER.
There is no article of natural history the ancients have dwelt on more than that of the viper, whether poets, physicians, or historians. All have enlarged upon the particular sizes, colours, and qualities, yet the knowledge of their manners is but little extended. Almost every author that has treated of them, if he hath advanced some truths which he has left slenderly established by proof or experiment, by way of compensation, hath added as many falsehoods so strongly asserted, that they have occasioned more doubt than the others have brought of light, certainty, and conviction.
Cerastes.
Heath. Sc.
London Publish’d Decr. 1.st 1789. by G. Robinson & Co.
Lucan, in Cato’s march through the desert of the Cyrenaicum in Search of Juba, gives such a catalogue of these venomous animals, that we cannot wonder, as he insinuates, that great part of the Roman army was destroyed by them; yet I will not scruple to aver this is mere fable. I have travelled across the Cyrenaicum in all its directions, and never saw but one species of viper, which was the Cerastes, or Horned Viper, now before us. Neither did I ever see any of the snake kind that could be mistaken for the viper. I apprehend the snake cannot subsist without water, as the Cerastes, from the places in which he is found, seems assuredly to do. Indeed those that Lucan speaks of must have been all vipers, because the mention of every one of their names is followed by the death of a man.
There are no serpents of any kind in Upper Abyssinia that ever I saw, and no remarkable varieties even in Low, excepting the large snake called the Boa, which is often above twenty feet in length, and as thick as an ordinary man’s thigh. He is a beast of prey, feeds upon antelopes, and the deer kind, which having no canine teeth, consequently no poison, he swallows whole, after having broken all its bones in pieces, and drawn it into a length to be more easily mastered. His chief residence is by the grassy pools of rivers that are stagnant. Notwithstanding which, we hear of the Monk Gregory telling M. Ludolf, that serpents were so frequent in Abyssinia, that every man carried with him a stick bent in a particular manner, for the more commodiously killing these creatures, and this M. Ludolf recommends as a discovery. And Jerome Lobo, among the rest of his fables, has some on this subject likewise. A cold and rainy country can never be a habitation for vipers. We see, on the contrary, that their favourite choice are deserts and burning sand, without verdure, and without any moisture whatever.
The very learned, though too credulous, Prosper Alpinus, says, that many have assured him, that near the lakes contiguous to the sources of the Nile there is a number of basiliscs, about a palm in length, and the thickness of a middle finger; that they have two large scales, which they use as wings, and crests and combs upon their head, from which they are called Basilisci or Reguli, that is, crowned, crested, or kingly serpents; and he says that no person can approach these lakes without being destroyed by these crested snakes.
With all submission to this naturalist’s relation, I should imagine he could not have heard the description of these lakes from many travellers, if all those that approached them were killed by the basiliscs. I shall only answer for this, that having examined the Lake Gooderoo, those of Court Ohha, and Tzana, the only lakes near the sources of the Nile, I never yet saw one serpent there, whether crowned or uncrowned, nor did I ever hear of any, and therefore believe this account as fabulous as that of the Acontia and other animals he speaks of in this whole chapter[86]. The basilisc is a species of serpent, frequently made mention of in scripture, though never described, farther than that he cannot be charmed so as to do no hurt, nor trained so as to delight in music; which all travellers who have been in Egypt know is exceedingly possible, and frequently seen. “For, behold, I will send basiliscs among you, saith the scripture, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord[87]”. And[88] “Thou shalt tread upon the lion and basilisc[89] &c.”
I shall mention one name more, under which the Cerastes goes, because it is equivocal, and has been misunderstood in scripture, that is Tseboa, which name is given it in the Hebrew, from its different colours and spots. And hence the Greeks[90] have called it by the name of Hyæna, because it is of the same reddish colour, marked with black spots as that quadruped is. And the same fable is applied to the serpent and quadruped, that they change their sex yearly.
Some philosophers, from particular system, have judged from a certain disposition of this animal’s scales, that it is what they term, Coluber, while others, from some arrangement of the scales of its tail, will have it to be what they call Boa. I enter not into the dispute, it is here as faithfully represented as the size will permit, only I shall observe that, unless Boa means something more than I know it does, the name is ill chosen when applied to any species of poisonous serpents, because it is already the proper name of the large snake, just mentioned, that is not viviparous, and has no poison. Pliny and Galen say, that the young vipers are so fierce as to become parricides, and destroy their mother upon their birth. But this is surely one of the ill-grounded fancies these authors have adopted. The Cerastes is mentioned by name in Lucan, and without warranting the separate existence of any of the rest, I can see several that are but the Cerastes under another term. The thebanus ophites, the ammodytes, the torrida dipsas, and the prester[91], all of them are but this viper described from the form of its parts, or its colours. Cato must have been marching in the night when he met this army of serpents. The Cerastes hides itself all day in holes in the sand, where it lives in contiguous and similar houses to those of the jerboa, and I have already said, that I never but once found any animal in this viper’s belly, but one jerboa in a gravid female cerastes.
I kept two of these last-mentioned creatures in a glass jar, such as is used for keeping sweetmeats, for two years, without having given them any food; they did not sleep, that I observed, in winter, but cast their skins the last days of April.
The Cerastes moves with great rapidity, and in all directions, forward, backward, and sideways. When he inclines to surprise any one who is too far from him, he creeps with his side towards the person, and his head averted, till judging his distance, he turns round, springs upon him, and fastens upon the part next to him; for it is not true what is said, that the Cerastes does not leap or spring. I saw one of them at Cairo, in the house of Julian and Rosa, crawl up the side of a box, in which there were many, and there lye still as if hiding himself, till one of the people who brought them to us came near him, and though in a very disadvantageous posture, sticking as it were perpendicular to the side of the box, he leaped near the distance of three feet, and fastened between the man’s forefinger and thumb, so as to bring the blood. The fellow shewed no signs of either pain or fear, and we kept him with us full four hours, without his applying any sort of remedy, or his seeming inclined to do so.
To make myself assured that the animal was in its perfect state, I made the man hold him by the neck so as to force him to open his mouth, and lacerate the thigh of a pelican, a bird I had tamed, as big as a swan. The bird died in about 13 minutes, though it was apparently affected in 50 seconds; and we cannot think this was a fair trial, because a very few minutes before, it had bit the man, and so discharged part of its virus, and it was made to scratch the pelican by force, without any irritation or action of its own.
The Cerastes inhabits the greatest part of the eastern continent, especially the desert sandy parts of it. It abounds in Syria, in the three Arabias, and in Africa. I never saw so many of them as in the Cyrenaicum, where the Jerboa is frequent in proportion. He is a great lover of heat; for tho’ the sun was burning hot all day, when we made a fire at night, by digging a hole, and burning wood to charcoal in it, for dressing our victuals, it was seldom we had fewer than half a dozen of these vipers, who burnt themselves to death approaching the embers.
I apprehend this to be the aspic which Cleopatra employed to procure her death. Alexandria, plentifully supplied by water, must then have had fruit of all kinds in its gardens. The baskets of figs must have come from thence, and the aspic, or Cerastes, that was hid in them, from the adjoining desert, where there are plenty to this day; for to the westward in Egypt, where the Nile overflows, there is no sort of serpent whatever that I ever saw; nor, as I have before said, is there any other of the mortal kind that I know in those parts of Africa adjoining to Egypt, excepting the Cerastes.
It should seem very natural for any one, who, from motives of distress, has resolved to put a period to his existence, especially women and weak persons unaccustomed to handle arms, to seek the gentlest method to free themselves from that load of life now become insupportable. This, however, has not always been the case with the ancients. Aria, Petus’s wife, stabbed herself with a dagger, to set her husband an example to die, with this memorable assurance, after giving herself the blow, “Petus, it is not painful.” Porcia, the wife of Brutus, died by the barbarous, and not obvious way of perishing, by swallowing fire; the violent agitation of spirits prevailing over the momentary difference in the suffering. It is not to be doubted but that a woman, high-spirited like Cleopatra, was also above the momentary differences in feeling; and had the way in which she died not been ordinary and usual, she certainly would not have applied herself to the invention of a new one. We are therefore to look upon her dying by the bite of the Cerastes, as only following the manner of death which she had seen commonly adopted by those who were intended to die without torment.
Galen speaking of the Aspic in the great city of Alexandria, says, I have seen how speedily they (the aspics) occasioned death. Whenever any person is condemned to die whom they wish to end quickly and without torment, they put the viper to his breast, and suffering him there to creep a little, the man is presently killed. Pausanias speaks of particular serpents that were to be found in Arabia among the balsam trees, several of which I procured both alive and dead, when I brought the tree from Beder Hunein; but they were still the same species of serpent, only some from sex, and some from want of age, had not the horns, though in every other respect they could not be mistaken. Ibn Sina, called by Europeans Avicenna, has described this animal very exactly; he says it is frequent in Shem (that is the country about and south of Damascus) and also in Egypt; and he makes a very good observation on their manners; that they do not go or walk straight, but move by contracting themselves. But in the latter part of his description he seems not to have known the serpent he is speaking of, because he says its bite is cured in the same manner as that of the viper and Cerastes, by which it is implied, that the animal he was describing was not a Cerastes, and the Cerastes is not a viper, both which assertions are false.
The general size of the Cerastes, from the extremity of its snout to the end of its tail, is from 13 to 14 inches. Its head is triangular, very flat, but higher near where it joins the neck than towards the nose. The length of its head, from the point of the nose to the joining of the neck, is 10/12ths of an inch, and the breadth 9/12ths. Between its horns is 3/12ths. The opening of its mouth, or rictus oris 8/12ths. Its horns in length 3/12ths. Its large canine teeth something more than 2/12ths and ½. Its neck at the joining of the head 4/12ths. The body where thickest 10/12ths. Its tail at the joining of the body 2/12ths and ½. The tip of the tail 1/12th. The length of the tail one inch and 3/12ths. The aperture of the eye 2/12ths, but this varies apparently according to the impression of light.
The Cerastes has sixteen small immoveable teeth, and in the upper jaw two canine teeth, hollow, crooked inward, and of a remarkable fine polish, white in colour, inclining to blueish. Near one fourth of the bottom is strongly fixed in the upper jaw, and folds back like a clasp knife, the point inclining inwards, and the greatest part of the tooth is covered with a green soft membrane, not drawn tight, but as it were wrinkled over it. Immediately above this is a slit along the back of the tooth, which ends nearly in the middle of it, where the tooth curves inwardly. From this aperture I apprehend that it sheds its poison, not from the point, where with the best glasses I never could perceive an aperture, so that the tooth is not a tube, but hollow only half way; the point being for making the incision, and by its pressure occasioning the venom in the bag at the bottom of the fang to rise in the tooth, and spill itself through the slit into the wound.
By this flat position of the tooth along the jaw, and its being defended by the membrane, it eats in perfect safety; for the tooth cannot press the bag of poison at the root while it lies in this position, nor can it rise in the tube to spill itself, nor can the tooth make any wound so as to receive it, but the animal is supposed to eat but seldom, or only when it is with young.
The viper has but one row of teeth, none but the canine are noxious. The poison is very copious for so small a creature, it is fully as large as a drop of laudanum dropt from a vial by a careful hand. Viewed through a glass, it appears not perfectly transparent or pellucid. I should imagine it hath other reservoirs than the bag under the tooth, for I compelled it to scratch eighteen pigeons upon the thigh as quick as possible, and they all died nearly in the same interval of time; but I confess the danger attending the dissection of the head of this creature made me so cautious, that any observation I should make upon these parts would be less to be depended upon.
People have doubted whether or not this yellow liquor is the poison, and the reason has been, that animals who had tasted it did not die as when bitten, but this reason does not hold in modern physics. We know why the saliva of a mad dog has been given to animals and has not affected them; and a German physician was bold enough to distil the pus, or putrid matter, flowing from the ulcer of a person infected by the plague, and taste it afterwards without bad consequences; so that it is clear the poison has no activity, till through some sore or wound it is admitted into circulation. Again, the tooth itself, divested of that poison, has as little effect. The viper deprived of his canine teeth, an operation very easily performed, bites without any fatal consequence with the others; and many instances there have been of mad dogs having bit people cloathed in coarse woollen stuff, which had so far cleaned the teeth of the saliva in passing through it, as not to have left the smallest inflammation after the wound.
I forbear to fatigue the reader by longer insisting upon this subject. A long dissertation would remain upon the incantation of serpents. There is no doubt of its reality. The scriptures are full of it. All that have been in Egypt have seen as many different instances as they chose. Some have doubted that it was a trick, and that the animals so handled had been first trained, and then disarmed of their power of hurting; and fond of the discovery, they have rested themselves upon it, without experiment, in the face of all antiquity. But I will not hesitate to aver, that I have seen at Cairo (and this may be seen daily without trouble or expence) a man who came from above the catacombs, where the pits of the mummy birds are kept, who has taken a Cerastes with his naked hand from a number of others lying at the bottom of the tub, has put it upon his bare head, covered it with the common red cap he wears, then taken it out, put it in his breast, and tied it about his neck like a necklace; after which it has been applied to a hen, and bit it, which has died in a few minutes; and, to complete the experiment, the man has taken it by the neck, and beginning at his tail, has ate it as one would do a carrot or a stock of celery, without any seeming repugnance.
We know from history, that where any country has been remarkably infested with serpents, there the people have been screened by this secret. The Psylli and Marmarides of old undoubtedly were defended in this manner,
Ad Quorum cantus mites Jacuére Cerastæ.
Sil. Ital. lib. iii.
To leave ancient history, I can myself vouch, that all the black people in the kingdom of Sennaar, whether Funge or Nuba, are perfectly armed against the bite of either scorpion or viper. They take the Cerastes in their hands at all times, put them in their bosoms, and throw them to one another as children do apples or balls, without having irritated them, by this usage so much as to bite. The Arabs have not this secret naturally, but from their infancy they acquire an exemption from the mortal consequences attending the bite of these animals, by chawing a certain root, and washing themselves (it is not anointing) with an infusion of certain plants in water.
One day when I was with the brother of Shekh Adelan, prime minister of Sennaar, a slave of his brought a Cerastes which he had just then taken out of a hole, and was using it with every sort of familiarity. I told him my suspicion that the teeth had been drawn, but he assured me they were not, as did his master Kittou, who took it from him, wound it round his arm, and at my desire ordered the servant to carry it home with me. I took a chicken by the neck, and made it flutter before him; his seeming indifference left him, and he bit it with great signs of anger, the chicken died almost immediately; I say his seeming indifference, for I constantly observed, that however lively the viper was before, upon being seized by any of these barbarians he seemed as if taken with sickness and feebleness, frequently shut his eyes, and never turned his mouth towards the arm of the person that held him. I asked Kittou how they came to be exempted from this mischief? he said, they were born so, and so said the grave and respectable men among them. Many of the lighter and lower sort talked of enchantments by words and by writing, but they all knew how to prepare any person by medicine, which were decoctions of herbs and roots.
I have seen many thus armed for a season do pretty much the same feats as those that possessed the exemption naturally, the drugs were given me, and I several times armed myself, as I thought, resolved to try the experiment, but my heart always failed me when I came to the trial; because among these wretched people it was a pretence they might very probably have sheltered themselves under, that I was a Christian, that therefore it had no effect upon me. I have still remaining by me a small quantity of this root, but never had an opportunity of trying the experiment.
The reader will attend to the horn which is placed over the eye in the manner I have given the figure of it, it is fluted, and has four divisions. He will likewise observe the tooth as viewed through a glass. He may suppose the black represents a painter’s pallet, for the easier discerning the white tooth, which could not otherwise appear distinctly upon the white paper.
Binny.
London Publish’d Jany. 19.th 1790 by G. Robinson & Co.