plenty that fellow go bong (dead) by-and-by, mine believe." We all
jumped up, and sure enough, poor Cato came slowly towards us, looking
the ashy-grey colour to which fear turns the black, and followed by
Ferdinand, who dragged after him a large black snake, the author of
the mischief. If Australia is exempt from wild beasts, the number of
venomous reptiles with which it is
cursed make it as dangerous to the
traveller as other tropical countries in which ferocious animals
abound. Hardly a tree or a shrub can be
found that does not contain or conceal some
stinging abomination. The whole of these are not, of course, deadly,
but a tarantula bite, or a centipede sting, will cripple a strong man
for weeks, while a feeble constitution stands
a fair chance of succumbing. But of all these pests, none can equal
the snakes, which not only swarm, but seem to have no fear of man,
selecting dwellings by choice for an abode. These horrible reptiles
are of all sizes, from the large carpet snake of twenty feet, to the
little rock viper of scarcely half a dozen inches.
The great majority of these are venomous, and are of too many
different kinds for me
to attempt their enumeration here. The most
common with us were
the brown, black, and whip snakes, and the death-adder, all poisonous;
and the carpet-snake, harmless. The brown and black snakes run from
two to eight feet in length, frequent the long grass, chiefly in the
neighbourhood of swamps, and from the snug way in
which they coil up, and their disinclination to move, are highly
dangerous. The la