Broderip, in his Leaves from the Note-book of a Naturalist (Parker, 1852), speaks of a serpent thirty feet in length, which attacked the crew of a Malay proa anchored for the night close to the island of Celebes.
Mr. C. Collingwood in Rambles of a Naturalist, states that “Mr. Low assured me that he had seen one [python] killed measuring twenty-six feet, and I heard on good authority of one of twenty-nine feet having been killed there. In Borneo they were said to attain forty feet, but for this I cannot vouch.”
That large pythons still exist in South and Western China, although of very reduced dimensions as compared with those described in ancient works, is affirmed by many writers, from whom I think it is sufficient to extract a notice by one of the early missionaries who explored that country.
“Pour ce qui est des serpens qu’on trouve dans Chine l’Atlas raconte que la Province de Quansi, en produit de si grands et d’une longueur si extrême, qu’il est presque incroyable; et il nous assure, qu’il s’en est trouvé, qui étaient plus longs que ne seraient pas dix perches attachées les unes avec les autres, c’est-à-dire, qu’ils avaient plus de trente pieds géométriques. Flore Sienois dit, ‘Gento est le plus grand de tous ceux qui sont dans les provinces de Quansi, de Haynan, et de Quantun ... il dévore les cerfs.... Il s’élève droit sur sa queue, et combat vigoureusement, en cette posture, contre les hommes et les bêtes farouches.’”[174]
We have unfortunately no clue to the actual length of the serpent Bomma, described by J. M. da Sorrento in A Voyage to Congo in 1682, contained in Churchill’s collection of voyages published in 1732.[175] “The flesh they eat is generally that of wild creatures, and especially of a sort of serpent called Bomma. At a certain feast in Baia, I observed the windows, instead of tapestry and arras, adorned with the skin of these serpents as wide as that of a large ox, and long in proportion.”
That harmless snakes of from twelve to fourteen feet in length occur abundantly in Northern Australia is generally known; but it is only of late years that I have been made acquainted with a firm belief, entertained by the natives in the interior, of the existence near the junction of the Darling and Murray, south of the centre of the continent, of a serpent of great magnitude.
I learn from Mr. G. R. Moffat that on the Lower Murray, between Swan Hill and the Darling junction—at the time of his acquaintance with the district (about 1857 to 1867)—the black fellows had numerous stories of the existence of a large serpent in the Mallee scrub. It was conspicuous for its size, thirty to forty feet in length, and especially for its great girth, swiftness, and intensely disgusting odour; this latter, in fact, constituted the great protection from it, insomuch as it would be impossible to approach without recognising its presence.
Mr. Moffatt learnt personally from a Mr. Beveridge, son of Mr. Peter Beveridge, of Swan Hill station, that he had actually seen one, and that his account quite tallied with those of the blacks. In answer to an inquiry which I addressed to Australia, I received the note attached below.[176]
Mr. Henry Liddell, who was resident on the Darling River in 1871-72, informs me that he has heard from stock-riders and ration-carriers similar accounts to that of Mr. Moffatt, with reference to the existence of large serpents of the boa species in an adjacent locality, viz. the tract of country lying to the east of Darling and Murray junction, in the back country belonging to Pooncaira station.
They described them as being numerous, in barren and rocky places, among big boulders; fully forty feet long; as thick as a man’s thigh; and as having the same remarkable odour described by Mr. Moffatt. They spoke of them as quite common, and not at all phenomenal, between Wentworth and Pooncaira.