e of our servants, a very strict Mahometan, believed himself charmed
against poisonous reptiles, and used to bring me centipedes and
scorpions in his hands, saying they never hurt him. He left our service
and was employed by the Borneo Company, about half a mile from our
house. One day, while cutting rattans in a shed, a cobra bit his thumb.
He thought nothing of it, but, putting away his work as usual, went
home, cooked his rice and ate his supper. By this time, however, his arm
began to swell and his head to swim. Instead of going to the doctor, who
then lived close by, he must needs go to the Bishop to cure him; so just
as we were sitting down to dinner, about seven o'clock, he reeled into
the house. The Bishop cauterized the wound, although it seemed too late
to be any use; he was getting cold and faint. However, by dint of being
walked up and down between two men, and having two whole bottles of
brandy administered to him, a glass at a time, besides sal volatile,
chloroform, and every stimulant we had, he got through the night. The
Bishop sat up with him all night, and I could hear him, when at last I
went to bed, calling out at intervals, "Oh, Allah! Oh, Lord Bishop!"--so
terrible was the pain he suffered in his arm. His wife, who was my
baby's ayah, appeared in the morning. "Come," said she, "make no more
noise, keeping everybody awake, but take up your bed (mat) and let us go
home." He meekly obeyed; but, poor man, he had abscesses under his arm,
and fell into weak health afterwards; so it is evidently unwise to
despise a cobra.

There were many other snakes besides cobras, some poisonous, but most of
them harmless.

The Marquis Doria and Signor Becarri, two distinguished naturalists, who
lived for some months at Sarawak, collecting bird-skins, insects, and
plants, told me that the natives often represented a snake to be
poisonous which was not so. However, we had the mata hari, sun-snake,
black and coral colour, and a metallic green flat-headed creature,
Fortrex trigonocephalus, which were venomous enough. I once had a little
flower-snake for a pet. It was beautifully marked with green and lilac,
and used to catch flies climbing about the room; but one day it mounted
to the top of a high door, the wind blew the door to, and my pretty
snake was thrown to the ground and broke its back.

The boa-constrictor--sawar, as the Malays called it--lived in the jungle
and rice-swamps. Sometimes it attained an enormous si