Our cooking implements consisted of a kettle for boiling the plantains, which, by the way, was getting to be much worn out, and my men were beginning to look forward to the time when it should be broken so that I would give it to them to make bracelets of; and two cooking-pots, one especially for my use and the other for the use of the men; I also had a frying-pan, but nothing had been fried in it since I had it, for want of lard or oil. Our entire cooking operations consisted of boiling or roasting over a charcoal fire. The two poor fellows with the snake had no pot to cook it in, my Commi men objecting strongly to have any thing of the kind cooked in such a vessel. The Apingis were much downhearted, for they had anticipated much pleasure from their snake-broth, the snake being, they said, very fat. They had on hand a little salt and a little Cayenne pepper. It would have tasted so good! So they had to be satisfied with roasting the snake over the fire. After our meal I opened my chest to get some tobacco. This of course “brought down the house,” and they seemed perfectly happy after their hard day’s work, for the poor fellows had worked very hard. They seated themselves round the fires, smoked their pipes, and gradually one by one fell asleep. It was a fortunate thing we had musquito-nets, for I could hear these insects buzzing about in such a manner that one might have almost thought a band of music was playing in the neighborhood. [Sidenote: _SNAKES BY NIGHT._] At length I wrapped myself well in my blanket and went to sleep. But lo! in the middle of the night I was awakened by the cackling of one of the fowls, which was tied by the leg to a stick we had put on the ground. I popped my head out of my musquito-net, when I beheld by the glow of the fire an enormous python (or snake), a tremendous big fellow, who had just come out of the water and was about to gobble up one of the two fowls, and would have swallowed both of them if it had had time to do so. No others were aroused by the noise the fowls made, so I quietly took my gun that laid alongside of me, and sent two loads into the python, which settled him. My men jumped up in alarm, seized their guns, and looked as warlike as possible. They thought we were attacked unawares by some Oroungou fellows, and set up a wild yell of defiance, which was responded to by a most hearty laugh on my part. In the mean time the defeated boa had moved about in the midst of us and sent all the fellows off, just as they were asking, “Who has been killed by that gun?” and I shouted in reply, “This enormous snake.” My two Apingi fellows’ eyes brightened as they thought of the good food they were going to have, and said—“Ah! ah! if we had only known we should have brought a cooking-pot of our own; we would have had such nice snake-broth all the time!” This snake measured almost sixteen feet in length, and would have kept the fellows in broth for a long while.