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The black American scorpion whose bite is more dreaded by the Negroes than even the snake's may have been easily brought by ship in luggage or in cargo. But the Fer-de-lance, whose nearest home is in Guiana, is not likely to have come on board ship.
He is some six or eight feet long, black, with more or less bright yellow about the tail and under the stomach. He not only faces the Fer-de-lance, who is often as big as he, but kills and eats him.
It's the home of the fer-de-lance." "The Yellow Viper?" queried Stuart. "The same. An' the name's a good one. It's more viperous than any other snake of the viper bunch, an' its disposition is mean and yellow right through. Ever see one?" "No," said Stuart, "I haven't. I heard there were some in Trinidad, and there have been a few reported in Cuba. But I guess they're rare there.
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.
Meanwhile the doctor bade his attendant put on the table a big jararaca, or fer-de-lance, which was accordingly done. The jararaca was about three feet and a half, or perhaps nearly four feet long that is, it was about nine inches shorter than the mussurama.
"What a place for a camp-meeting!" thought Simpson as he turned to leave it. "God's cathedral aisles, and roofed by God's blue sky." His pony shied and whirled around, a long snake a fer-de-lance flowed across the path. The desire to hold his services in the grove remained in his mind; the only reason he did not transfer them there at once was that he was not yet quite sure of his people.
Why, any minute, something you take for a branch, a knot of liana, a clump of fruit, a hangin' air-plant, may take life an' strike. An' that's all ye'll ever know in this world." "There's no cure for it?" "None. A little while after a fer-de-lance strikes, ye're as dead as if you'd been dropped in mid-Atlantic, with a shot tied to your feet."
In great Martinique so the French say it is dangerous to travel through certain woodlands on account of the Fer-de-lance, who lies along a bough, and strikes, without provocation, at horse or man. I suspect this statement, however, to be an exaggeration. I was assured that this was not the case in St.
One man seen by Russ had not only lost his speech in consequence of the bite of a fer-de-lance snake, but had become, and still remained, hemiplegic. In the rest of Russ's cases speech alone was abolished. Russ remarks that the intelligence was altogether intact, and sensibility and power of motion were unaffected.
The snake was the dreaded vivora de la cruz, as the gauchos call it, a pit-viper of the same family as the fer-de-lance, the bush-master, and the rattlesnake. It was about three feet long, very thick in proportion, and with broad head and blunt tail.
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