Dreading the venomous snakes most thoroughly, they have no fear of the non-poisonous kinds, and capture them without difficulty. Mr. Brett saw one of them catch a young coulacanara snake by dropping a noose over its head by means of a forked stick, and then hauling it out and allowing it to coil round his arm. Although a very young specimen, only five feet or so in length, the reptile was so strong that the man was soon obliged to ask some one to release his arm.
Sometimes this snake grows to a great length, and, as it is extremely thick-bodied, is a very dangerous reptile to deal with. Mr. Waterton succeeded in taking a coulacanara fourteen feet long, after a fierce struggle, which is amusingly told in his “Wanderings.” I have seen the skin of this snake in the collection which then adorned Walton Hall.
The skill of these natives is well shown by their success in capturing a cayman with a hook. Mr. Waterton had tried to catch the reptile with a shark hook, but his efforts were unavailing, the reptile declining to swallow the bait, and at last contriving to get it off the hook, though it was tied on with string. After more than one failure, he showed the hook to a native, who shook his head at it, and said that it would not answer the purpose, but that he would make a hook that would hold the cayman.
Accordingly, on the following day he returned with a very remarkable hook. It consisted of four pieces of hard wood about a foot in length, curved, and sharpened at the ends, which were slightly barbed. These barbs, if we may so call them, were tied back to back round the lower end of a rope, a knot in the rope preventing it from dropping through the barbs, which were forced to diverge from each other by four pegs driven between them and the rope. The so-called hook, indeed, was very like a four-pronged Fijian spear, supposing the shaft to be cut off below the prongs, a hole bored through the centre of the cut shaft, and a rope passed through the hole and knotted below the prongs. It is evident that if such an instrument as this were taken into a cayman’s throat, the diverging prongs would prevent it from coming out again, and as long as they remained unbroken, so long would the cayman be held.
(1.) THE MAQUARRI DANCE.
(See [page 1253].)
(2.) SHIELD WRESTLING OF THE WARAUS.
(See [page 1261].)
This curious hook was then taken to the river side, and baited with an agouti. The end of the rope was made fast to a tree, and the barbed hook suspended about a foot from the water by means of a short stick driven into the bank. The native then took the empty shell of a tortoise, and struck it several blows with an axe, by way of telling the cayman that its meal was ready. The result of the operation justified the Indian’s promise. The cayman could not get at the bait without lifting itself well out of the water, and securing it by a sudden snap; while the resistance offered by the stick caused the projecting barbs to be driven into the reptile’s throat as it fell back into the water.