The most terrible of the venomous snakes are the Cobra of India--called by a Portuguese name, which means "hooded"; a very grand-looking serpent, which holds its head high, and gives a loud hiss as it rises to strike its prey; and the Rattlesnake of South America. The Cobra de Capello is a land-serpent, but can swim, and climb trees. It is treated with great respect in Egypt and India; and the people of Ceylon say that it belongs to another world, but has come to pay them a visit. They worship it in their temples, and their priests feed it with sugar and milk, and never allow it to be killed. I believe serpents are not now worshipped in Egypt; but they once were. They are constantly represented upon Egyptian monuments, which are as old as the time when the children of Israel were in Egypt; and on one of them may be seen three men, who are being offered as sacrifices to a serpent which is represented coiled around the seat of the sceptred king, as if protecting him. The cobra loves music; and it is upon these serpents especially that the snake-charmers like to show their skill. They take them about, coiled up in baskets. When the performance is to begin, the lid of the basket is opened, and the charmer, seated on the ground, begins to play upon his pipe. Instantly the beautiful snake lifts its head, expands its hood--a loose skin about the neck which it makes large or small at pleasure--and creeps out, waving its body gracefully while the music lasts, and when it ceases, dropping down again into the basket. Some people have power to charm serpents; I have read a story of a man who, by his music cleared a house of the snakes which infested it; having got into the empty rooms, and hidden themselves in the crevices in the walls. It was a strange sight to see them creep from their hiding-places at the sound of the pipe; but sometimes serpents are deaf both to the voice and music of the charmer--"like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely" to which David compares the wicked.