Other venomous species exist in this part of Africa, of which several are vipers, and among others the Puff-Adder (Vipera inflata). The natives have named it Noga-Poutsane, or the Goats’ Serpent, because it makes at night a bleating exactly resembling that animal. There were certainly no goats, says Livingstone, in the place where I happened to hear it. The natives suppose that by this bleating it hopes to deceive the traveller, and draw him within its reach. Some species emit, when they are frightened, a peculiar odour, strong enough to indicate their presence when they have found their way into the huts. There are also several varieties of Cobras (the Naja-Haje of Dr. Smith). When they are attacked, they raise their head a foot from the ground, extend their neck in a threatening manner, dart their tongue to and fro with extreme rapidity, while rage glares in their fixed and glassy eyes.
Different serpents of the genus Dendrophis, as, for example, the Green Climber (Bucephalus viridis), scale the trees in search of birds and their eggs, to which they are curiously partial. The Bucephalus is armed with fangs; nevertheless it is not venomous, and these fangs, which turn inwards, are only of use in preventing the retrogression of their prey, only one part of which is enclosed between its jaws.
The Cobra or Naja (Vipera naja), the “Hooded Snake” and “Spectacle Snake” of the English, the “Cobra de Capella” of the Portuguese, must be classed among those serpents which are the most dangerous through their violence, and the subtle character of their venom. It is easily recognized by its faculty of dilating the back and sides of the neck, under the influence of fear or rage, to which it owes its popular appellation; the elevated skin of the back of the neck presenting much the appearance of a hood (capella). It is usually three or four feet in length; of a pale reddish-brown colour above, and bluish or yellowish-white below; with a characteristic mark on the back of the neck closely resembling the figure of an old-fashioned pair of spectacles. It is a sluggish creature, and easily killed, but its poison is of the most fatal quality, causing death within two hours. It frequents the purlieus of human residences in India, and occasionally penetrates into the very houses, attracted apparently by the domestic poultry, and by the humidity of the wells and drainage. In Ceylon, the natives, if journeying abroad by night, carry a small stick with a loose iron ring, whose strange metallic sound, as they strike it on the earth, frightens the cobra from their path. The poison is harmless if taken internally. It is secreted in a large gland in the serpent’s head, and flows, when the animal compresses its mouth on any object, through a cavity of the tooth into the wound.[129]
The Indian species plays a conspicuous part in the displays of the Hindu jugglers, who exercise a strange power over them by the tones of their voice and the sounds of various musical instruments, compelling them to rise partially from the ground and go through a succession of fantastic movements. Something of this power is also due to the fascination of the juggler’s eye. Serpent-charming is of remote antiquity in Egypt and in most Oriental nations, where the profession would seem to be hereditary. Several allusions to it occur in Holy Writ.[130]
CHAPTER X.
ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PRAIRIES OF THE NEW WORLD:—HERBIVORA, INSECTIVORA, AND CARNIVORA.
WE have seen that the order of Pachydermata, which furnished the Ancient World with the most gigantic species of the terrestrial creation, is represented in the New World by comparatively insignificant types: the Tapir and the Peccary. The first, although far inferior in stature to the elephant, the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus, is, nevertheless, one of the largest American Herbivora; the bison, llama, and stag alone exceeding it in size.
