“There is another story, too, told in relation to these combats. The blood of the elephant, it is said, is remarkably cold; for which reason, in the parching heats of summer, it is sought by the dragon with remarkable avidity. It lies, therefore, coiled up and concealed in the river, in wait for the elephants when they come to drink; upon which it darts out, fastens itself around the trunk, and then fixes its teeth behind the ear, that being the only place which the elephant cannot protect with the trunk. The dragons, it is said, are of such vast size that they can swallow the whole of the blood; consequently the elephant, being drained of its blood, falls to the earth exhausted; while the dragon, intoxicated with the draught, is crushed beneath it, and so shares its fate.[159]
“Æthiopia produces dragons, not so large as those of India, but still twenty cubits in length. The only thing that surprises me is, how Juba came to believe that they have crests. The Æthiopians are known as the Asachæi, among whom they most abound; and we are told that on those coasts four or five of them are found twisted and interlaced together like so many osiers in a hurdle, and thus setting sail, with their heads erect, they are borne along upon the waves to find better sources of nourishment in Arabia.”[160]
Pliny then goes on to describe, as separate from dragons, large serpents in India, as follows.
“Megasthenes[161] informs us that in India serpents grow to such an immense size as to swallow stags and bulls; while Metrodorus says that about the river Rhyndacus, in Pontus, they seize and swallow the birds that are flying above them, however high and however rapid their flight.
“It is a well-known fact that during the Punic war, at the river Bagrada, a serpent one hundred and twenty feet in length was taken by the Roman army under Regulus, being besieged, like a fortress, by means of balistæ and other engines of war. Its skin and jaws were preserved in a temple at Rome down to the time of the Numantine war.
“The serpents, which in Italy are known by the name of boa, render these accounts far from incredible, for they grow to such vast size that a child was found entire in the stomach of one of them which was killed on the Vaticanian Hill during the reign of Emperor Claudius.”[162]
Aristotle tells us that “in Libya, the serpents, as it has been already remarked, are very large. For some persons say that as they sailed along the coast, they saw the bones of many oxen, and that it was evident to them that they had been devoured by serpents. And, as the ships passed on, the serpents attacked the triremes, and some of them threw themselves upon one of the triremes and overturned it.”[163]
It is doubtful whether the dragons described by Benjamin of Tudela, who travelled through Europe and the East and returned to Castille in 1173,[164] as infesting the ruins of the palace of Nebuchodonosor at Babylon, so as to render them inaccessible, were creatures of the imagination such as the mediæval mind seems to have loved to dress up, or venomous serpents. But there is little doubt that the so-called dragons of later voyages were simply boas, pythons, or other large serpents, such as those described by John Leo, in his description of a voyage to Africa, as existing in the caverns of Atlas. He says, “There are many monstrous dragons which are thick about the middle, but have slender necks and tails, so that their motion is but slow.[165] They are so venomous, that whatever they bite or touch, certain death ensues.” There is also the statement of Job Ludolphus that (in Æthiopia) “the dragons are of the largest size, very voracious, but not venomous.”[166]
I fancy that at the present day the numbers, magnitude, and terrifying nature of serpents but feebly represent the power which they asserted in the early days of man’s existence, or the terror which they then inspired. This subject has been so ably dealt with by a writer of the last century[167] that I feel no hesitation in transcribing his remarks at length.
“It is probable, in early times, when the arts were little known and mankind were but thinly scattered over the earth, that serpents, continuing undisturbed possessors of the forest, grew to an amazing magnitude, and every other tribe of animals fell before them. It then might have happened that the serpents reigned tyrants of the district for centuries together. To animals of this kind, grown by time and rapacity to one hundred or one hundred and fifty feet long, the lion, the tiger, and even the elephant itself were but feeble opponents. That horrible fetor, which even the commonest and the most harmless snakes are still found to diffuse, might in these larger ones become too powerful for any living being to withstand, and while they preyed without distinction, they might also have poisoned the atmosphere round them. In this manner, having for ages lived in the hidden and unpeopled forest, and finding, as their appetites were more powerful, the quantity of their prey decreasing, it is possible they might venture boldly from their retreats into the more cultivated parts of the country, and carry consternation among mankind, as they had before desolation among the lower ranks of nature.