Jerome Lobo continues, “that this danger was not to be much regarded in comparison of another his negligence brought him into. As he was picking up a skin that lay upon the ground, he was stung by a serpent that left its sting in his finger; he picked out an extraneous substance about the bigness of an hair, which he imagined was the sting. This slight wound he took little notice of, till his arm grew inflamed all over; his blood was infected; he fell into convulsions, which were interpreted as the signs of inevitable death.” (Chap. xii. p. 125.) Now, with all submission to Jerome Lobo, the first serpent had brought him within a near view of death; the second did no more, for it did not kill him; how comes it that he says the first danger was nothing in comparison to the second? The first would have certainly killed him, by blowing upon his back, if he had been nearer than 12 feet. The other had nearly killed him by a sting. Death was the end of them both. I cannot see the difference between the two dangers. The first serpent was of a new species, that kills a man at the distance of 12 feet by breathing upon him. The second was also new, for he killed by a sting. We know of no such power that any of the serpent kind have. If Dr Johnson believes this, I will not say that it is the most improbable thing he ever gave credit to, but this I will say, that it is altogether different from what at this day is taught us by natural philosophy. We easily see, by the strain in which these stories are told, that all these fables of Lobo would have passed for miracles, had the conversion of Abyssinia followed. They were preparatory steps for receiving him as confessor, had his merit not been sufficient to have entitled him to a higher place in the kalendar. Rainy, miry, and cold countries, are not the favourite habitation of serpents. Abyssinia is deluged with six months rain every year while the sun is passing over it. It only enjoys clear weather when the sun is farthest distant from it in the southern hemisphere; the days and nights are always nearly equal. Vipers are not found in a climate like this. Accordingly, I can testify, I never saw one of the kind in the high country of Abyssinia all the time I lived there; and Tigré, where Jerome Lobo places the scene of his adventures, by being one of the highest provinces in the country, is surely not one of the most proper. It was the 20th of January, at seven o’clock in the morning, we left Axum; our road was at first sufficiently even, thro’ small vallies and meadows; we began to ascend gently, but through a road exceedingly difficult in itself, by reason of large stones standing on edge, or heaped one upon another; apparently the remains of an old large causeway, part of the magnificent works about Axum.