as we stood looking at him and talking about him, but stared at us unwinkingly. We were amused at his audacity, and went on calling each other's attention to his method of concealment, and his evident purpose of observation, all the while thinking it was a king-snake. At last Abeham went to stir him up, to see how long he was, when the snake slowly lifted its head, and again Abeham retired in dismay, crying out: "It's a moccasin! Shoot him!" We killed him, and found him to be an unusually large moccasin, not quite five feet long, but very thick and heavy.
Strange as it may appear, the chief drawbacks of the Dismal Swamp are not its serpents, or bears, or other formidable wild creatures, but its flies, most pestilent of which are the yellow fly, before which for six weeks in July and August even the colored "swampers" are forced to abandon the "gum roads." The yellow fly raises a burning blister with every bite; and, helped by the "redhorse mosquito," gnats and gallinippers, they can, it is said, kill a mule.
The largest wild animal (except cattle) found in the Dismal Swamp is the black bear. Captain Wallace killed thirty on his farm last winter (by spring guns set around his cornfields), one of which weighed 850 pounds; and "Jim" the
