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Updated: June 16, 2025
It would be well that we should seem to be a merchant-ship from Southampton and appear to flee from them." "We shall see them anon," said the master-shipman. "Ha, said I not so? There they lie, the water-snakes, in Freshwater Bay; and mark the reek of smoke from yonder point, where they have been at their devil's work. See how their shallops pull from the land!
He answered it with angry grunts, and to punish him she locked him up supperless. But it was probably no hardship, for he was an adept in foraging for frogs and water-snakes. He was in his place next morning, and came scrambling to the cellar doors when she opened them.
Large numbers of these little tortoises, about ten inches in length, are seen basking together on the logs or stones on the borders of lakes or streams. The slightest noise arouses them, when they slip off, splashing in all directions into the water. They swim with their little heads above the surface at a rapid rate, bearing a strong resemblance to water-snakes.
The livid, yellow eels, like great water-snakes, swim near the surface and pursue their enemy. After the conflict has lasted a quarter of an hour or so, the mules and horses appear less alarmed. They no longer erect their manes, and their eyes express less pain and terror.
Frogs are croaking; those persistent frogs, whom the Muses have ordained to sing for aye, in spite of Bion and all tuneful poets dead. We sit and watch the water-snakes, the busy rats, the hundred creatures swarming in the fat well-watered soil.
This was the more desirable, as the canal is one of the drains of the city, an office that it fills badly enough, seeing that there is scarcely any fall of water from the lower quarters of the city to the lake. I never saw water-snakes in numbers to compare with those in the canal, and by the side of it.
And, instead of watchmen and policemen to keep out nasty things at night, there were thousands and thousands of water-snakes, and most wonderful creatures they were. They were all named after the Nereids, the sea-fairies who took care of them, Eunice and Polynoe, Phyllodoce and Psamathe, and all the rest of the pretty darlings who swim round their Queen Amphitrite, and her car of cameo shell.
Sometimes they saw the Indians in light canoes pursue manatis and alligators with harpoons for the sake of their flesh, and perhaps they felt a shiver at the sight of the huge water-snakes of the Amazons River.
On the 24th, several water-snakes were seen, and in the afternoon, with a light north-west wind, we passed about six miles from the north end of Scott's Reef,* which we placed a few miles to the westward of its position in the chart, and of which we shall take another opportunity of speaking.
Some of these Water-Snakes will swallow a black Land-Snake, half as long again as themselves. He is of the Lizard Kind, but much bigger; his Back is of a dark Copper-Colour; his Belly an Orange; he is very nimble in running up Trees, or on the Land, and is accounted very poisonous. He has the most Sets of Teeth in his Mouth and Throat, that ever I saw.
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