After playing with it for some moments, the Bambarra threw it back to the ground. Even there it made no effort to escape!
The charmer now turned to me, and said, in a tone of triumph, “Now, mass’ Edward, you shall hab rebenge. Look at dis!”
As he spoke he pressed his thumb against the fauces of the serpent, until its mouth stood wide open. I could plainly see its terrible fangs and poison glands. Then, holding its head close up to his lips, he injected the dark saliva into its throat, and once more flung it to the ground. Up to this time he had used no violence—nothing that would have killed a creature so retentive of life as a snake; and I still expected to see the reptile make its escape. Not so, however. It made no effort to move from the spot, but lay stretched out in loose irregular folds, without any perceptible motion beyond a slight quivering of the body. In less than two minutes after, this motion ceased and the snake had all the appearance of being dead!
“It am dead, mass’,” replied the black to my inquiring glance, “dead as Julium Caesar.”
“And what is this plant, Gabriel?”
“Ah, dat is a great yerb, mass’; dat is a scace plant—a berry scace plant. Eat some ob dat—no snake bite you, as you jes seed. Dat is de plant ob de snake-charmer.”
The botanical knowledge of my sable companion went no farther. In after years, however, I was enabled to classify his “charm,” which was no other than the Aristolochia serpentaria—a species closely allied to the “bejuco de guaco,” that alexipharmic rendered so celebrated by the pens of Mutis and Humboldt.
My companion now desired me to chew some of the roots; for though he had every confidence in the other remedy, he deemed it no harm to make assurance doubly sure. He extolled the virtues of the new-found plant, and told me he should have administered it instead of the seneca root, but he had despaired of finding it—as it was of much more rare occurrence in that part of the country.
I eagerly complied with his request, and swallowed some of the juice. Like the seneca root, it tasted hot and pungent, with something of the flavour of spirits of camphor. But the polygala is quite inodorous, while the guaco gives forth a strong aromatic smell, resembling valerian.
I had already experienced relief—this would have given it to me almost instantaneously. In a very short time time the swelling completely subsided; and had it not been for the binding around my wrist, I should have forgotten that I had been wounded.