him, coiled round him and
killed him. Before the snake could swallow him, some men came to the
place and killed the snake, but the boy had been dead some minutes
before they arrived. They described how this snake attacked anything.
It first crawled slowly along the ground till near its prey, or waited
in long grass, or in bushes, till some animal or bird came near. When
close to the animal it wished to capture, the snake lunged rapidly at
it, seized it with its teeth and dragged it to the ground, at the same
time coiling round the animal and compressing it in its folds. Even a
riet-bok could be thus killed by the snake. The reptile then slowly
gorges its prey, and remains torpid many days.

Although this large snake was a terrible creature to look at, it was not
as dangerous as several other snakes that were common near our village.
The most dangerous of these was the puff-adder, which the Caffres called
"_m'namba_." This snake I have seen about four feet long, and as thick
as a stout arm. It is a sluggish, dull animal, very brilliantly
coloured, its body being speckled yellow and black, which makes it look
like dead leaves, so that you might tread on it without seeing it,
unless you were always on the look-out. This snake has a practice of
throwing itself backward and striking with its poisonous fangs anything
that is following it. To be bitten by the _m'namba_ is certain death,
no case ever having occurred of a man or any cattle having been bitten
and having lived after it. Our old rain-maker had some little bits of
wood that he called _mutt_, some of which, he said, would prevent a man
from dying when he had been bitten by a snake; but I never heard of a
cure by this means. Some of his medicine was, however, wonderful in its
effects, as I once experienced. I was very ill and had a bad fever; so
old Amanzi came to me and gave me a small pill of wood, which I bit and
ate. In a few minutes I broke out in a perspiration, and then went to
sleep, and slept for nearly the whole of the sun's course round the
earth (a whole day), and when I woke I was quite well. Caffres are very
seldom ill: they eat so little meat, are so much out of doors, and take
so much exercise, that they rarely suffer from bad health. The climate
also is very healthy, so that the people were strong and robust.

It was about two moons after our expedition against the Bushmen, that I
was out one morning with Tembile and Inyoni, on some hi