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It, too, is a tree-climber, and may be seen lying coiled up on a low, thick branch or decayed stump, or sometimes on the bare ground, apparently selecting spots where it can be least easily distinguished. Though generally smaller than the bushmaster, it attains a length of eight feet or more.
Even Picici, the bushmaster, largest and deadliest of all the poisonous snakes heard and heeded. Not one muscle in all his nine feet of tightly coiled, scale-covered body quivered. Ordinarily, Picici feared not one living thing.
The Jaguar watched their antics with little interest and made no attempt to disturb them. When they had gorged themselves on the loathsome repast they tore off long strips of flesh and carrying them in their hooked beaks flew to the lower branches of the nearest trees. After her encounter with the bushmaster, Suma spent as little time as possible away from her abode.
One of the innumerable mysteries of nature which are at present absolutely insoluble is why some snakes should be so vicious and others absolutely placid and good-tempered. After removing the vicious harmless snake, the doctor warned us to get away from the table, and his attendant put on it, in succession, a very big lachecis of the kind called bushmaster and a big rattlesnake.
Some of them grow to a very large size, being indeed among the largest poisonous snakes in the world their only rivals in this respect being the diamond rattlesnake of Florida, one of the African mambas, and the Indian hamadryad, or snake-eating cobra. The fer-de-lance, so dreaded in Martinique, and the equally dangerous bushmaster of Guiana are included in this genus.
But we may fancy how desperate would be the strife between a python and the venomous bushmaster of Demerara. The labarri another beautiful snake, adorned with the colours of the rainbow produces certain death by its envenomed bite.
A dozen species are known in Brazil, the biggest one being identical with the Guiana bushmaster, and the most common one, the jararaca, being identical, or practically identical with the fer-de-lance. The snakes of this genus, like the rattlesnakes and the Old World vipers and puff-adders, possess long poison-fangs which strike through clothes or any other human garment except stout leather.
This poison is secreted in large glands which, among vipers, give the head its peculiar ace-of-spades shape. The rattlesnake yields a much smaller quantity of white venom, but, quantity for quantity, this white venom is more deadly. It is the great quantity of venom injected by the long fangs of the jararaca, the bushmaster, and their fellows that renders their bite so generally fatal.
Near the entrance to the cavity she stopped with a terrible growl. The sinewy body of a great snake a bushmaster, was gliding rapidly into the opening; in fact, half its scale-covered length had already disappeared from view.
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