All the solid-toothed snakes are as harmless as worms, and may be freely handled. Quite a number of these are found in the country. The remarkable egg-eating snake, _Dasypeltis scabra_, has a highly-specialised egg-breaking mechanism. A sawing apparatus in the backbone serves the purpose of teeth. The egg-shell is cast up after the contents have been sucked down. There are several species of the small Coppery snake; one or two of the House snake, of the genus Boodon, often found near dwelling-houses. House snakes can easily be tamed, and they may become more useful than cats, and much less harmful. The non-venomous python is found occasionally in the rocky valleys. Anchieta’s python, _P. anchietæ_, is the only species. This reptile has an average length of about 16 feet, and kills all its victims by constriction. The female python lays her eggs and then hatches them like a broody hen. The dreaded scorpion is also a habitat of the country. Tortoises are found. Swarms of the migratory locust cause much damage when they descend upon the vegetation. Among the smaller but not less troublesome creatures are the many beetles, spiders, ticks, and mites. In the coast waters the ungainly seals have their home, and off Cape Cross they are found in very large numbers. Whales are not so numerous as in former years, but several whaling stations are in existence along the shore. Altogether, South-West Africa has an uncommon variety of individuals in the animal world. CHAPTER V THE EARLY DAYS The only use of war, says a cynical writer, is to teach geography. Certainly there are many people in South Africa who a few months ago would have been sorely puzzled to locate Luderitz Bay on the map of Africa. And how many are aware that this islet-studded inlet is a place of considerable historic importance? It was here, says Theal, that “for the first time Christian men trod the soil of Africa south of the tropic.”[11] In 1486 Bartholomew Diaz, the famous Portuguese navigator, who was in search of the way to India, stepped ashore from the little fifty-ton ship that had brought him from the Tagus, and gave the bay the name Angra Pequena, the Little Bay. On Serra Parda, or the Grey Mountain, now Pedestal Point, he set up the first of the three stone crosses erected on the South African coast. It stood there above the dreary waste, a striking landmark, well into the nineteenth century, when vandals from the whaling ships broke it in pieces. Fortunately, considerable fragments of the monument were recovered and conveyed to the South African Museum at Cape Town in 1856.