il its mouth stood wide open. I could plainly see its terrible fangs
and poison glands. Then, holding its head close up to his lips, he
injected the dark saliva into its throat, and once more flung it to the
ground. Up to this time he had used no violence--nothing that would
have killed a creature so retentive of life as a snake; and I still
expected to see the reptile make its escape. Not so, however. It made
no effort to move from the spot, but lay stretched out in loose
irregular folds, without any perceptible motion beyond a slight
quivering of the body. In less than two minutes after, this motion
ceased and the snake had all the appearance of being dead!

"It am dead, mass'," replied the black to my inquiring glance, "dead as
Julium Caesar."

"And what is this plant, Gabriel?"

"Ah, dat is a great yerb, mass'; dat is a scace plant--a berry scace
plant. Eat some ob dat--no snake bite you, as you jes seed. Dat is de
plant ob de _snake-charmer_."

The botanical knowledge of my sable companion went no farther. In after
years, however, I was enabled to classify his "charm," which was no
other than the _Aristolochia serpentaria_--a species closely allied to
the "bejuco de guaco," that alexipharmic rendered so celebrated by the
pens of Mutis and Humboldt.

My companion now desired me to chew some of the roots; for though he had
every confidence in the other remedy, he deemed it no harm to make
assurance doubly sure. He extolled the virtues of the new-found plant,
and told me he should have administered it instead of the seneca root,
but he had despaired of finding it--as it was of much more rare
occurrence in that part of the country.

I eagerly complied with his request, and swallowed some of the juice.
Like the seneca root, it tasted hot and pungent, with something of the
flavour of spirits of camphor. But the polygala is quite inodorous,
while the guaco gives forth a strong aromatic smell, resembling
valerian.

I had already experienced relief--this would have given it to me almost
instantaneously. In a very short time time the swelling completely
subsided; and had it not been for the binding around my wrist, I should
have forgotten that I had been wounded.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.

KILLING A TRAIL.

An hour or more we had spent since entering the glade--now no longer
terrible. Once more its flowers looked bright, and their perfume had
recovered its sweetness. Once more the singing of the b