He would certainly have lapsed into sleep and died, but Allen piled the pine chips about the stump and had a fire blazing in a few seconds. The dry stump burned like pitch, producing a furnace-like heat; and Allen partly undressed his brother and rubbed him hard with snow. Under this heroic treatment Louis came back to painful consciousness, and the fierce heat from the pine did the rest. But it was several hours before he was able to resume the tramp, and it was dark when they reached the shanty.
[How They Captured the Python.]
Hamburg, as many know, is the great headquarters of the trade in wild animals for menageries and "zoos." To Hamburg are shipped lions, elephants, and giraffes, captured in South and East Africa, tigers from India, jaguars and tapirs from South America, gorillas from the Congo, orang-outangs from Borneo, and, in fact, about every kind of beast, bird, and reptile from all quarters of the globe.
The warehouses of the two principal firms engaged in this business are interesting places to visit after the arrival of a "beast ship," with news of unusually large specimens of animal life.
The narrator made such a visit some months ago on the arrival of a remarkably large, brilliantly marked python, shipped from Padang, Sumatra. This colubrine giant is more than thirty feet in length, and was bespoken by the Austrian government for a zoo at Budapest.
But the story of its capture is even more interesting than the huge creature itself, for this python had fallen a victim to its fondness for the notes of a violin.
There is a telegraph line extending across Sumatra, from Padang, connecting that port, by means of submarine cables, with Batavia, and Singapore.
Along this line of land wire are a number of interior stations. One of these, called Pali-lo-pom, has been in charge of an operator named Carlos Gambrino, a mestizo from Batavia, Java, educated at the industrial school there.
The station is on a hillock in the valley of the River Kampar, and is adjacent to dense forest, jungle, and a long morass. It is a solitary little place, consisting merely of four or five thatched huts, elevated on posts to a height of six feet from the ground, to be more secure from noxious insects, reptiles, and wild beasts.