Sketches of Our Life at SarawakMcDougall, Henriette
History
Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak
McDougall, Henriette
McDougall, Henriette, 1817-1886 -- Travel -- Malaysia -- Sarawak; Sarawak (Malaysia) -- Description and travel
In clearing the hill our workmen disturbed the haunts of many snakes. We
were a good deal visited by cobras for some years. The natives said that
the Adam and Eve of all the cobras lived in a cave under our hill.
One day we were having asphalte laid down in the printing-room, to keep
away white ants. The room had been emptied to do this, and Stahl went in
to inspect the work after the men had gone to their breakfast at eleven
o'clock. He saw a large cobra at the end of the room, and hit it with a
stick he had in his hand; but the stick broke in two, and the cobra
reared itself up with inflated hood. Another minute must have seen Stahl
a prey to the monster; but the Bishop, passing by, heard him exclaim
when the stick broke, and going quickly in saw Stahl standing, white,
fascinated, and motionless, before the cobra. Happily he had a stout
walking-stick, and at once felled the reptile; but he took a good deal
of killing. It was ten feet long.
This was Adam.
Eve was killed under the verandah of the house almost a year afterwards.
She was eight feet long.
One night the Bishop had been reading the Rev. F. Robertson's sermon
about St. Paul and the viper. It was late, and being rather sleepy he
carried the book in one hand and a candle in the other into his
dressing-room, and was just going to set the candle down, when his eye
fell on a cobra, coiled up on the chair on which he was about to seat
himself. No stick was at hand, but he smote the snake with the book.
Struck in the right place, they are not difficult to kill. So "St. Paul
and the Viper" put an end to the cobra. That the bite of this snake is
not, however, certain death we had a curious instance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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