Part 21

Zool., 2590.

Letter xxxviii.

Ibid. xii.

Ibid. xi.

Ibid. xxxi.

Letter xxiii.

Orn. Dict., Introd., xxvii.

Zool., 5364.

Brit. Birds, ii. 264.

Zool., 2455.

Ibid., 565.

Ibid., 3753.

Zool., 4945.

Ibid., 4945.

Zool., 4995.

Ibid. 1639.

Letter xviii., 2d ser.

Zool., 565.

VI.

THE CRESTED AND WATTLED SNAKE.

About the middle of the last century there existed in Amsterdam a Museum of natural history, which, though accumulated by the zeal and industry of a private individual, far exceeded in extent and magnificence any collection then in the world. It had been gathered by Albert Seba, a wealthy apothecary in the Dutch East India Company's service, who fortunately published an elaborate description of its contents. This great work, "Locupletissimi Rerum Naturalium Thesauri accurata Descriptio,"--in four volumes folio, published from 1734 to 1765,--is even now remarkable for the accuracy and beauty of its copious engravings, which still are referred to as authorities, though the descriptions are devoid of scientific value. Many of these figures and descriptions, about whose reality no shadow of doubt exists, are those of creatures which are altogether unknown to modern science, and some of them are highly curious.

Serpents seem to have been a special hobby of Seba's; and he has delineated a vast number of species. Among them are two about which a singular interest hangs. They are of rather small size; the one pale yellow, marked with oval reddish spots, the other reddish, with five green transverse bands. The head in each case has a horny-pointed muzzle, and the cheeks are furnished with depending wattles of a coral-red hue.

From the expressions of wonder with which Seba introduces his descriptions of these animals, it is evident that they were no ordinary forms. He does not know whether to call them Eels or Serpents, the critical characters, which in our day would instantly determine this point, being then scarcely heeded. He calls them "marine," but whether on any other evidence than the pendent processes of the cheeks, which he calls "fins," does not appear. But no fish known to naturalists will answer to these representations. The pointed head, indeed, resembles in some respects that of Mur{oe}na, but this genus of fishes is altogether destitute of pectoral fins, while the vertically-flattened tail, and the long dorsal and anal fins confluent around the extremity of the body in Mur{oe}na, are totally unlike these figures. These and all similar fishes are, moreover, destitute of visible scales; but in these the scaling is decidedly serpentine, and the second, in particular, has large symmetrical plates across the belly, while the head in both is shielded with broad plates like a Colubrine Snake. The tail is drawn out to a long conical point, without the slightest appearance of compression or of bordering fins. In one figure there is seen a little projecting point at the edge of the lower belly, which at first sight suggests the idea of the anal hook of a Boa, but which, by comparison with other figures, we discover to be intended to represent the projection of the pre-anal scale. The very minuteness of this character makes it valuable: its value was doubtless unheeded by the artist, who merely drew what he saw; it is, however, a very decisive mark of distinction between a serpent and a fish.

Seba records that he had received these Serpents from the Island of St Domingo. This was at that time a flourishing French colony, and its natural productions were far better known to Europe than they now are. When I visited the neighbouring island of Jamaica in 1845-46, I heard accounts of a wonderful animal occasionally seen in the eastern districts of the island, which was reported as a Snake with a cock's comb and wattles, and which crowed like a cock. A good deal of mystery attached to this strange Serpent.

It was appropriated to a very remarkable and peculiar character of scenery:--A wild mountain-region, formed of white limestone, abounding in narrow glens, bounded by abrupt precipices, and permeated by whispering streams that frequently pour in slender cascades over the rocks. The limestone rock rises in abrupt terraces, wall above wall, and its entire surface is most singularly honeycombed, "as if wrought by a graving tool into rough diamond-points," alternating with smooth and rounded holes of various sizes, from that of a hazel-nut upward. In many of these hollows lie the small land-shells of the country, bleached perfectly white, like the stone itself, of the genera Helix, Cyclostoma, Helicina, Cylindrella, Achatina, &c., many of them perfect, but many more in fragments. They exactly resemble fossil shells in situ, but the species are absolutely identical with those that crawl over the shrubs and trees in the same region. In very many cases the dead shells accurately fit the hollows in the rock, whose interior is impressed with the form and sculpturing of the shell in intaglio:--a most curious and interesting fact, as it points to the very recent formation of the region, the stone bearing evident tokens of having been in a plastic condition when the shells were enveloped in it. Out of the hollows of the rock, their roots fast grasping the sharp-edged projections and tooth-like points of stone, and twining through the tortuous cavities, and insinuating their fibrils into every minute hollow where water may lodge, grow many tall trees of various kinds, interlaced with climbers, and hung with festoons of lianes, that resemble long and twisted cords, thrown from one to another, or depending from the branches towards the ground. The noble Agave, or what we in England call the American Aloe, here throws out its broad, fleshy, spine-edged leaves, and lifts its tall flower-stalk loaded with the candelabra-like branches of bloom; and numerous thick Cacti, some erect and massive, others whip-like, long and trailing, give a peculiar aspect to the vegetation. Great tufts of Orchide{oe},--the lovely Broughtonia, with its thick ovate leaves, and racemes of elegant crimson flowers, the Brasavola, with long leaves resembling porcupine-quills in form, and blossoms of virgin white, the Oncidium, with its yellow and red flowers, like a score of painted butterflies dancing in every breath, and many others,--crowd the forks or droop from the twisted boughs of the trees.

This formation of honeycombed limestone is full of caverns, many of which lead into one another in chains, and which have invested the region with a sort of superstitious mystery. Runaway slaves and outlaws have availed themselves of the facilities which its ravines and inaccessible fastnesses afford, to defy capture; and during the rebellion of the Maroons, it attained a considerable notoriety. There is one estate about eight miles from Kingston, in the immediate vicinity of which the famous hero, Three-fingered Jack, made his head-quarters. It is a district of wild torrents and waterfalls of the most romantic character; "the imagination of no painter of theatrical spectacles can surpass the wild wonders of the mountain-hold of the real Three-fingered Jack. Part of the road by which you ascend the falls is a subterranean passage; and caverns are entered by simple crevices which seem mere chinks in the irregular surface of the rock, all which natural peculiarities account for the mysterious disappearances which the mountain hero was enabled to enact from his pursuers."

It was at this spot I first heard reliable tidings of the strange Crested Snake. A medical gentleman of reputation informed me that he had seen, in 1829, a serpent of about four feet in length, but of unwonted thickness, dull ochry in colour with well-defined dark spots, having on its head a sort of pyramidal helmet, somewhat lobed at the summit, of a pale red hue. The animal, however, was dead, and decomposition was already setting in. He informed me that the negroes of the district were well acquainted with it; and that they represented it as making a noise, not unlike the crowing of a cock, and as being addicted to preying on poultry.

Nor is it in Jamaica alone that the Crested Snake is known. In the island of St Domingo, whence Seba received his curious specimens, my friend Mr Hill heard reports of it. A Spanish gentleman whom he was visiting in Hayti, told him that he had seen it, and begged him to note it among the remarkable things of the country. It was in that far east of the island, known as the ancient Caciquedom of Higuey, where the Indians were of a more warlike disposition than their meek brethren of the centre and west, and where the cruelties perpetrated upon them by their Spanish invaders reached such a superhuman pitch of diabolism, that even Las Casas says he almost feared to repeat them. The limestone mountains are here of exactly the same description as those in Jamaica, and the scenery assumes exactly the same romantic character. My friend's Spanish informant had seen the serpent with mandibles like a bird, with a cock's crest, with scarlet lobes or wattles; and he described its habits,--perhaps rather from common fame than from personal observation,--as a frequenter of hen-roosts, into which it would thrust its head, and deceive the young chickens by its imitative physiognomy, and by its attempts to crow, like their own Chanticleer. "Il canta como un Gallo;" was the report in Hayti, just as in Jamaica.