Hüsseïn Aga, who is on board our vessel, with another Kurd of Suliman-kashefs, confirms what we had already heard from the Kurd Abdul-Elliàb, and which all these people firmly believe,—namely, that derwishes know how to prepare a liquor, which, if but once drunk of, is a preventive thenceforward of the bite of a snake, or of rendering it harmless. Such a derwish is said to be found even in Khartùm. But some few words, which they assert to be a secret, are requisite to exorcise or find out where snakes are. I then heard that the King of the Snakes is called Shah Maràn. They cannot say, however, where this Sultan lived or died before he assumed the form of a snake, nor do they know his fixed residence, for he sometimes appears in one place, sometimes in another, like the two tutelar deities by water and land, Abu Seïd and Abd-el-Kader. The Arabs are also said to adjure this Snake King in their exorcisms. Even the long sailor, Salem, whom I had patronised on account of his German countenance, and to whom I had given some piasters for the snakes he brought me, one of which he even seized with naked hands before my eyes, affirmed by his silence that he would not trust me, even under the greatest promises of secrecy, with this mystery, inherited from his father. The country of this Shah Maràn is in Turkish Kurdistàn, not very far from Adana, where there are two villages exempted from paying tribute on condition of supplying the snakes there with milk. Abd-Elliab had himself offered milk to the snakes in that region, and swore that he had seen with his own eyes this King, unless it was a Wokil or deputy, of whom Maràn has many. Abd-Elliab poured his milk into one of the basins there formed by nature, whereupon, in the first place, a large snake, with long hair on its head, rolled out from the hole in the rock, and drank of it. This great chief then retired, without, however, speaking a word to him, as it had done to others; because, at that time, he had not abjured strong drinks. Afterwards other snakes crawled out from all the clefts of rocks, and took the remains of the milk, as being subjects of the former one. The two other Kurds (sing. _Kurd_ plur. _Krat_), who were not friends with this Koran-hero, vouched for the truth of their countryman’s statement, and gave it as their opinion that the great Maràn only shewed himself to a saint, or a Sultan; and that he had a human face, for that otherwise he could not speak and give advice.