Those whose experience of snakes is acquired in the ‘Zoo,’ can form but a faint idea of the rapidity with which the indolent-looking ophidian can move when so inclined; and were one to escape from its glass cage in that interesting collection, the agility of its movements would only be equalled by that of the astonished spectators towards the outer air. Were the habits of the snake family more aggressive and less retiring than they are, this sprightliness would be inconvenient beyond measure; and but for this tendency to shun man and escape from him at all times, the bill of mortality, which Sir Joseph Fayrer has shown us is frightfully large, would be infinitely greater than it is. Happily, self-preservation is an instinct as strong in serpents as in the hares of our fields.
But to return to the European in India and his share of risk incurred. There are obvious reasons why so large a percentage of our Aryan brethren fall victims. Barefooted and barelegged, and with that belief in kismet (fate) which, sometimes to his advantage, oftener to his prejudice as a man of the world, imbues the soul of ‘the mild Hindu,’ he trusts his bronzed nether limbs unhesitatingly in places where snakes are known to abound, and it is only a question whether or not he happens to touch one. With that sublime indifference to the danger, acquired by custom and a familiarity with it from his babyhood, he coils himself up, with or without his scanty garment of cotton stuff, on the bare earthen floor of his mud-hut, or beneath the spreading branches of a tree, and falls into a sleep, from which neither mosquitoes nor the chorus of predatory jackals, nor the screech-owls in the branches above, can rouse him. Many a time, perhaps, he has seen a snake killed on that very spot. But what does it matter to Ramcherrun or Bojoo? Are not snakes in other places too? In one minute he is snoring out the watch of night. He dreams of his rice and paddy fields, mortgaged at ninety per cent. interest, and ever likely to remain so; he dreams of his mahájon (banker), whose superior knowledge of the three Rs enabled that rascal to so circumvent his neighbours. Then he turns over, and rolls quietly on the top of the deadly krait; or stretching out his brown hand, grasps the tender back of a passing cobra, which bites him, and he dies! The gods had it so. His time was come—kismet! kismet!! Toolsi Kándoo is re-thatching his house, and in uplifting the old rotten grass, squeezes a roof-snake (sankor) reposing therein, which resents the intrusion with its sharp teeth, and Toolsi is gathered to his fathers. Then there is Sirikisson Beldar cutting bamboos for his new roof, or the jungle grasses which are to furnish his house with matting, and the foe is molested, and makes his bite felt—before retreating to safer quarters. Gidari Teli has gone in the gloaming or in the darker night to fill his lota at the village well hard by, and returns only to tell his child-wife to run for the byd (native doctor), who will apply his nostrums, and the Brahmin to sing his incantations and perform sundry mystical rites whilst he, poor Gidari, passes away to the happy land. But even of white men there are few indeed who, after some years in the Indian plains, return home without a lively recollection of one or more escapes, for which at the moment they were thankful to Providence.
In large towns like Bombay or Calcutta, snakes are not unknown; whilst in and about the bungalows of most, if not all country stations, they are common, and pay visits to these habitations at inconveniently short intervals. There are few bungalows the thatched roof of which is not the occasional abode of one objectionable species—the sankor, or roof-snake; whilst round about, in the hollows of old trees, or beneath the flooring of the rooms, or in the garden hard by, come at intervals specimens more or less dangerous to human life. It will serve to show the nature of the danger from this source, if I relate a few of my own personal experiences during a residence of some years in Bengal.
Of the many snakes killed by me—some hundreds—I retain the liveliest recollection of the first my eyes beheld. I was then living in a small three-roomed bungalow, the flooring of which was almost on a level with the ground outside. Amongst other annoyances, the place was infested with rats; and being so low, the number of little toads that made free use of every room was incredible. My sweeper would in a short time fill and refill a gylah (a sort of round earthen pot capable of holding more than a gallon) up to the brim with toads. We called them frogs, but they were really toads of a jumping kind; and the only thing to be said in their favour was their capacity for swallowing mosquitoes, beetles, and other kinds of creeping and flying insects. But as a set-off against this advantage comes the fact that snakes with equal avidity swallow and relish toads, and are ever in quest of these dainty morsels. The rats, however, troubled me most. They destroyed my shoes, drank up the oil of my night-lamp—a very primitive arrangement, known as the tel-buttee, that carries one back to the time of Moses—sometimes extinguishing the light in the process; and made sad havoc of my cotton-stuffed pillows, the contents of which I would often discover, after an absence of a few days from home, strewn about the floor, and the pillow-cases ruthlessly destroyed; and it was not an uncommon thing to find a fat rat, which had effected an entrance through the mosquito curtains, nibbling away within an inch of my nose as I lay in bed. They held high revels in an old sideboard stored with sundry eatables, and so loud was the noise amongst the crockery therein, that often I had to get up and put the rebels to flight. In desperation, I determined one night to try what smoke would do to keep them out. Accordingly, I placed a piece of smouldering brown paper in the cupboard, watching, stick in hand, for the first rodent that should be caught in the act of sliding down the leg-supports on which this piece of furniture stood. I had not long to wait. Out came rat No. 1, and met his death on the spot. Chuckling over my success, I stood expectant of No. 2; but in place of him, came a brown snake about twenty-four inches long, close to my bare feet. This was much more than I bargained for. My stick was down on him in a second; but, unluckily, so was the tel-buttee, held in the other hand; and the brown snake and I were together in total darkness, a most unpleasant predicament for both of us.
I knew nothing of the habits of this or any other specimen of the snake family, so that, as a matter of course, a bite, to be followed by death in fifteen minutes, seemed to me quite inevitable! And I did, on the spur of the moment, about the very worst thing I could have done under the circumstances, that is, groped for the door at all hazards, and shouted for a light. It was five minutes before this could be obtained; the sleeping Hindu will stand a lot of waking, and is some time collecting his wits from the realms of slumber; and the snake was gone. We found a hole in the corner of the room, through which the experienced eyes of my servants at once discovered he had made his exit. But as this only led into an inner wall dividing the rooms, I had the discomfort of knowing that he shared my bungalow, and would certainly come again some other day. And so he did—or one like him—three days later, and was squeezed to death in the hinges of the door, and in broad daylight.
My next snake, I remember, was a large cobra—whose bite is certain death. Being fresh to the country, and determined not to be imposed upon, I had not grown to the habit of handing over all my belongings to the care of native servants, of whose language I scarcely knew a word, and of whose integrity and honesty I had heard none but the worst reports; and I strove manfully to keep a tight hand over everything and every one, and, from personal observation, to know how I stood in regard to supplies and household requisites of all kinds; and in particular, for financial reasons, to guard jealously my stock of wines and beer—expensive commodities in the East, and apt to disappear miraculously. In a word, I kept the keys of my own stores, and did not intrust them absolutely, as I afterwards saw the wisdom of doing, to my khansama (butler); and it was my custom then to issue a certain number of bottles of wine or beer or tinned meats, &c., from out the go-down or storeroom, as occasion required. One end of the bungalow veranda was bricked up, to form a small storeroom for such commodities; and it had ever been my custom to enter this somewhat dark chamber with caution, owing to its being rather a favourite haunt of scorpions and centipedes; and the latter being my pet aversion, I always kept a sharp lookout. On one occasion, however, I was pushing aside a large empty box which had contained brandy, when, to my horror, I saw a large snake reposing therein. Escaping with great rapidity, he coiled at bay on the floor, with hood expanded and eyes glistening savagely at me. Seizing the box, I threw it at him and on him; whilst my servant ran to the other end of the veranda for a stick, with which he was soon and easily despatched. On another occasion, I remember, in opening a bathroom door, a small but deadly snake, by some means or other perched on the top of it, fell straight on to my wrist, and thence to the floor; and similarly, whilst seated one morning on a pony, inspecting some repairs in an outbuilding used as a stable, the same species of snake fell from the bamboo and thatch of the inner roof right on to my head, thence to my left arm and the saddle-bow, and so to the ground, where he escaped in some straw. Some time later, in picking up a handful of fresh-cut grass to give a favourite Cabul horse, I felt something moving in my hand; and dropping the grass, out wriggled a krait, a snake that for deadly poison ranks nearly next to the cobra.
I have heard of snakes, though I have never seen one, lying concealed beneath bed-clothes and under pillows. Twice, however, on awaking in the morning I have found that I have been honoured with the company during the night of an adder in my bedroom; and one morning, on taking my seat at my writing-desk, I discovered a very large cobra—nearly four and a half feet long—lying at full length at my feet close against the wall. He made for the open door, and I killed him in the veranda with a riding-whip; whilst the natives, as usual in such emergencies, were rushing wildly about, and searching in the most unlikely corners for a more effective weapon. It was always a salutary habit of mine, for which I have to thank the sagacity of an old and faithful attendant, to shake my riding-boots, preparatory to putting a foot into one—to eject a possible toad ensconced therein; or, as would frequently happen, old Ramcherrun boldly thrust his bronze fingers in for the like precaution; and when there happened to be a toad or frog inside, how the old rascal used to make me laugh at the precipitate way in which he would withdraw his hand, exclaiming, with a startled countenance: ‘Kuchh hai bhitar!’ (There is something inside.) On one occasion, as luck would have it, he adopted the shaking process, when out dropped a small snake, which I identified as a roof-snake (sankor). After this, I took care where I put my boots and shoes at night, and Ramcherrun, where he put his fingers.
Snakes are frequently found in what would seem to be the most unlikely places. As an instance, a lady of my district very nearly put her hand on a live cobra in reaching an ornament from the mantel-piece; the reptile was lying quietly next the wall, behind a clock. How he got there, was a mystery never solved. A friend of mine, who had set a country-made wooden trap for rats, caught a cobra instead, much to the horror of his mehtur (sweeper). But, more curious still, a snake was discovered by a lady whom I knew, a few years ago, on a drawing-room table of a station bungalow. It was of a small venomous species, and was hiding beneath a child’s picture-book. On this occasion, the lady on taking up the book was bitten; but after suffering considerable pain, recovered.
Some very odd notions and superstitions regarding snakes obtain amongst the natives. There is a large snake called the dharmin, said to be a cross between the cobra and some other species. It is said to refrain from biting; but when pursued, strikes with its tail, which, according to the natives, can inflict painful and even dangerous wounds; and the belief obtains that this snake is quite innocuous on Sundays and Thursdays! It is considered unlucky to speak of any venomous snake by its proper name—nicknames or roundabout expressions being considered preferable; just as the correct word for cholera morbus is avoided, as in the highest degree dangerous to employ, and likely to bring the disease. Many natives who walk about after dusk repeatedly strike the ground before them with their lathee (a bamboo staff), and go at a slow pace; and the dâk-runners or rural postmen, who run stages of five or six miles carrying the mail-bags; invariably carry a number of loose iron rings on their shoulder-pole, to make a jingling sound as they trot along. There are several versions of the object of this; the primary object being no doubt to scare away snakes and other noxious animals; but the noise also gives warning to the next stage-runner of the approach of the mail-bags.
Snakes are said to avoid approaching a naked light or flame of any kind. This is an error, as I have more than once discovered, and very nearly to my cost. I perceived, on one occasion, almost encircling the oil-lamp on the floor of one of my dressing-rooms, what appeared to be a stream of spilt oil as it were staining the matting; and I was in the act of lowering the candle which I carried, for a closer inspection, when the dark line moved off within three inches of my shoeless feet. It was a black snake, three feet long, called the bahrá sámp, literally deaf adder or snake.