e man among them was indeed a great and powerful
spirit.

But, human nature being fundamentally the same all the world over, it was
natural enough--and, indeed, the wonder is how I escaped so long--that
one or other of the tribal medicine-men should get jealous of my power
and seek to overthrow me. Now, the medicine-man belonging to the tribe
in my mountain home presently found himself (or fancied himself) under a
cloud,--the reason, of course, being that my display of wonders far
transcended anything which he himself could do. So my rival commenced an
insidious campaign against me, trying to explain away every wonderful
thing that I did, and assuring the blacks that if I were a spirit at all
it was certainly a spirit of evil. He never once lost an opportunity of
throwing discredit and ridicule upon me and my powers; and at length I
discerned symptoms in the tribe which rendered it imperatively necessary
that I should take immediate and drastic steps to overthrow my enemy,
who, by the way, had commenced trying to duplicate every one of my tricks
or feats. I gave the matter some little thought, and one day, whilst out
on one of my solitary rambles, I came across a curious natural feature of
the landscape, which suggested to me a novel and, I venture to say,
remarkable solution of a very serious situation.

I suddenly found myself on the brink of a peculiar basin-like depression,
which, from its obvious dampness and profusion of bush and cover, I at
once recognised as the ideal abode of innumerable snakes. I marked the
spot in my mind, and returned home, pondering the details of the dramatic
victory I hoped to win. Day by day I returned to this depression and
caught numerous black and carpet snakes. From each of these dangerous
and poisonous reptiles I removed the poison fangs only; and then, after
scoring it with a cross by means of my stiletto, I let it go, knowing
that it would never leave a spot so ideal--from a snake's point of view.
I operated on a great number of the deadly reptiles in this way, but, of
course there remained many who were not so treated; whilst several of my
queer patients died outright under the operation. Needless to say, I
might have met my own death in this extraordinary business had I not been
assisted by my devoted wife. When we had finished our work, there was
absolutely nothing in the appearance of the place to indicate that it was
any different from its state when I first cast my