the sleeper, and was in the act of crushing him to death, when his companions fortunately returned; and attacking the monster, severed a portion of its tail, which so disabled it that it no longer retained the power of doing mischief. The Snake was then easily despatched, and was found to measure sixty-two feet and some inches in length.
Mr. M‘Leod, whose interesting account of a Python seizing its prey we have quoted at length, adds, that at Whidah on the coast of Africa, he has had opportunities of observing Pythons more than double the size of the specimen he has described, which were capable of swallowing animals much larger than goats or sheep. “Governor Abson, who had for thirty-seven years resided at Fort William (one of the African Company’s settlements there), described some desperate struggles which he had either seen or had come to his knowledge, between the Snakes and wild beasts, as well as the smaller cattle, in which the former were always victorious. A negro herdsman belonging to Mr. Abson (who afterwards limped for many years about the fort) had been seized by one of these monsters by the thigh; but from his situation in a wood, the Serpent, in attempting to throw himself around him, got entangled with a tree; and the man, being thus preserved from a state of compression which would instantly have rendered him quite powerless, had presence of mind enough to cut with a large knife, which he carried with him, deep gashes in the neck and throat of his antagonist, thereby killing him, and disengaging himself from his frightful situation. He never afterwards, however, recovered the use of that limb, which had sustained considerable
