ountry inhabited
by venomous reptiles. We are much indebted to Doctor Fagren for the
exhaustive researches he has made into the action of snake-poison and
its remedy--the result of which the reader can find in his elaborately
got-up volume, entitled "The Thanatophidia of India"--and on looking
over the concise directions given by him for immediate use in the event
of such an accident, I do not see that we could possibly have done more
than we did, considering the limited material we had at our command.
Perhaps, had it been a white man, with a strong constitution, he would
have pulled through; for the settled conviction that he was doomed,
doubtless accelerated the death of the black boy; but the action of the
poison is so rapid, that most cases terminate fatally. Two instances I
know of, in which the patient recovered. The first was an Irish
labourer, who whilst reaping took up a snake, which bit him in the
finger. He walked at once to the fence, put his hand on a post, and
severed the wounded member with his sickle. Irishman-like, he forgot
to move the sound fingers out of the way, and two of them shared the
fate of their injured companion. Paddy walked into the nearest
township, had his wounds dressed, and felt no inconvenience from the
venom. Under the soubriquet of "Three-fingered Tim," this individual
may frequently be met with at Sydney, and, for a glass of grog, will be
delighted to recount the whole affair, with the richest of Milesian
brogues. The second case was that of a woman. She was going from the
hut to the fireplace, when she trod on a snake, which bit her just
below the joint of the little toe; for, like Coleridge's Christabel--

"Her blue-veined feet unsandall'd were."

She was in a terrible position; her husband, and the other man for whom
she acted as hut-keeper, had both gone out with their flocks some hours
previously, and there was nobody about but a poor half-witted lad, who
hung about the place doing odd jobs. She was a resolute woman, and
made up her mind how to act, in far less time than it takes me to set
it down on paper. Coo-ehing for the lad, she went into the hut, and
came out again with a sharp tomahawk and an axe.

"Take this," she said, handing the latter to the boy, "and strike hard
on the back of it when I tell you."

Thus speaking, she placed her foot on a log of wood, adjusted the keen
edge of the tomahawk so that when struck it would sever the toe and the
portion o