One of the negroes whom I had hired with the plantation of Jaguaribe, had one leg much thicker than the other. This was occasioned, as he told me, by the bite of a rattle-snake; he said, that he had been cured from the bites of snakes by a _Curador de cobras_ or _Mandingueiro_, and had therefore not died; but that “as the moon was strong[120],” he had not escaped receiving some injury from the bite. He had frequently violent pains in his limbs, at the full and change of the moon particularly, and sometimes the wound opened, and remained in this state for weeks together; but if he was careful in not exposing it to the early dews of the morning, it would again heal without any medicinal applications being made use of. The most beautiful reptile which I saw was the _cobra de coral_, or coral snake or worm. It is about two feet in length, and of the thickness of a man’s thumb; it is marked with black, white and red stripes transversally. The general opinion is that it is venomous.[121] But the snakes do not cause so much annoyance as the smaller species of vermin which I am about to mention; because the former seldom enter the houses, nor are they very frequently to be seen in the paths or roads. But the _aranha caranguejeira_, or crab-spider, (_aranea avicularia_); the _lacraia_ or scorpion, and the _piolho de cobra_, or snake louse, (_scolopendra morsitans_), are to be met with in the houses and in all situations. They should be carefully avoided, for their bites are painful, and are said to cause inflammation. An instinctive recollection of the chance of meeting with these or other vermin of less importance became so habitual with me (and indeed is so with most persons) that when I was about to begin to read, I closed the book in the first place violently so as to crush any thing that might have crept in between the leaves; when my hat, or boots, or cloaths were put on, some precaution was taken, as a thing of course; this was not done from a direct idea of the likelihood of finding any thing unpleasant in that immediate instance; but the precaution was entered into from habit, unconsciously. I was one day bit by a _lacraia_; I had mounted my horse, and had taken my umbrella in my hand for the purpose of shading me from the sun when I had advanced farther upon my ride; when I was in the act of opening it, I felt suddenly a violent pain upon the fleshy part of the inside of one of my hands; on looking down I soon saw what it was that had bitten me, upon which I turned back, and rode home. I applied the juice of lemons to the part, and in about half an hour, not finding any particularly disagreeable sensations, again mounted my horse. The only effect which I experienced from the bite was a numbness in my hand for the remainder of the day, and a redness about the point which was immediately affected; but on the following day the former was removed, and the latter did not last long. Labat mentions an