“Oh, I don’t know,” said Rob, laughing. “There are plenty of people glad to get them in England for their hothouses. Besides, there are the botanists always very eager to see any new kinds.”
“Better try and get some new kinds o’ birds. There’s lots here with colours that make your eyes ache. They’d be better than vegetables. Why, right up north—I’ve never seen any down here—there’s little humpy birds a bit bigger than a cuckoo, with tails a yard long and breasts ever so much ruddier than robins’, and all the rest of a green that shines as if the feathers were made of copper and gold mixed.”
“Mr Brazier hasn’t come after birds.”
“Well then, look here; I can put him up to a better way of making money. What do you say to getting lots of things to send to the ’Logical Gardens? Lions and tigers and monkeys—my word, there are some rum little beggars of monkeys out here.”
“No lions in America, Shaddy.”
“Oh, ain’t there, my lad? I’ll show you plenty, leastwise what we calls lions here. I’ll tell you what—snakes and serpents. They’d give no end for one of our big water-snakes. My word, there are some whackers up these rivers.”
“How big?” said Rob, hiding a smile—“two hundred feet long?”
“Gammon!” growled Shaddy; “I ain’t one of your romancing sort. Truth’s big enough for me. So’s the snakes I’ve seen. I’ve had a skin of one fellow six-and-twenty foot long, and as opened out nearly nine foot laid flat. I dessay it stretched a bit in the skinning, but it shrunk a bit in the drying, so that was about its size, and I’ve seen more than one that must have been longer, though it’s hard to measure a twisting, twirling thing with your eye when it’s worming its way through mud and water and long grass.”
“Water-snakes, eh?” said Rob, who was beginning to be impressed by the man’s truth.
“Ay, water-snakes. They’re anti-bilious sort of things, as some folks calls ’em—can’t live out of the water and dies in.”