One day I witnessed a fearful scene. A man, a native of Goree, an island on the coast of Senegambia, who had the reputation of being a snake charmer and was then at the Gaboon, had succeeded in capturing one of these large naja. He was a bold man, and prided himself on never being afraid of any snake, however venomous the reptile might be; nay, not only was he not afraid of any of them, but he would fight with any of them and get hold of them. I had often seen him with snakes in his hands. He was careful, of course, to hold them just by the neck below the head, in such a manner that the head could not turn on itself and bite him. That day he brought into a large open place, perfectly bare of grass, one of these wild naja that he had just captured, and was amusing himself by teasing the horrid and loathsome creature when I arrived. It was a huge one! Most of the people of the village had fled, and those natives who like myself were looking on, kept a long way off. Not a Mpongwe man, not a single inhabitant of the whole region I have explored, would have ever dared to do what the Goree man did. Two or three times, as the snake crawled on the ground, we made off in the opposite direction with the utmost speed, myself, I am afraid, leading off in the general stampede; though I had provided myself with a gun. It was perfectly fearful, perfectly horrid and appalling to see that man making a plaything of this monster; laughing, as we may say, at death, for it could be nothing else, I thought. [Sidenote: _CHARMING A NAJA._] At first when I saw him he had the snake around his body, but he held it firmly just below the neck, and I could see by the muscles of his arm that he had to use great strength. As long as this part of the body is held firmly the snake loses much of its great power of crushing one to death as the boa-constrictor or python does with larger animals, and as small snakes do with smaller game; but with this naja the danger would have been the venomous bite. [Illustration: THE SNAKE CHARMER.]