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Updated: May 26, 2025
I should be glad to believe that the latter theory were the true one; that nothing is created really ugly, that the Fer-de-lance looks an hideous fiend, the Ocelot a beautiful fiend, merely because the outlines of the Ocelot approach more nearly to those which we consider beautiful in a human being: but I confess myself not yet convinced.
Lucia specimens of that abominable reptile, the Fer-de-lance, or rat-tailed snake, which is the pest of this island, as well as of the neighbouring island of Martinique, and, in Pere Labat's time, of lesser Martinique in the Grenadines, from which, according to Davy, it seems to have disappeared. It occurs also in Guadaloupe.
"Goldberger is right in that," agreed Godfrey; "but there's a poison unknown that will because it did." "It wasn't a snake bite?" "Oh, no; snake poison wouldn't kill a man that quickly not even a fer-de-lance. That fellow practically dropped where he was struck." "Then what was it?" Godfrey was sitting erect again. He was not smiling now. His face was very stern.
So the fer-de-lance is a great rat destroyer among the sugar plantations of Martinique, a snake which is as poisonous as the cobra of Ceylon.
For danger is everywhere it lurks in every shadow and is hidden in the bright sunlight, it is the uninvited guest, the invisible pedestrian who walks beside you in the crowded street ceaselessly, without tiring. But even a fer-de-lance should rather add to the number of hammock devotees than diminish them; for the three feet or more of elevation is as good as so many miles between the two of you.
But who will call the Puff Adder of the Cape, or this very Fer-de-lance, anything but ugly and horrible: not only from the brutality signified, to us at least, by the flat triangular head and the heavy jaw, but by the look of malevolence and craft signified, to us at least, by the eye and the lip? 'To us at least, I say.
But when he had got his adversary about one-third down, the Creoles just as so many Englishmen would have done seeing that all the sport was over, rewarded the brave Cribo by killing both, and preserving them as a curiosity in spirits. How the Fer-de-lance came into the Antilles is a puzzle.
The favorite prey of the mussurama is the most common and therefore the most dangerous poisonous snake of Brazil, the jararaca, which is known in Martinique as the fer-de-lance. In Martinique and elsewhere this snake is such an object of terror as to be at times a genuine scourge. Surely it would be worth while for the authorities of Martinique to import specimens of the mussurama to that island.
The lance-headed or yellow viper, commonly known as the fer-de-lance, a very venomous serpent capable of making considerable springs when in pursuit of its prey, is common hereabouts. Later two of our mules died from snake-bite. After a walk of three quarters of an hour the guide left the main road and plunged down through the jungle to the bank of the river.
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.
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