Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/241

 as I conceived that the tooth, passing through the boot, would be deprived of its venom. However, I galloped home as fast as possible, and as some native blacks were luckily encamped at our station, I sent for them as the best doctors in such a case. On drawing off my boot, and exposing the punctures, one of the blacks first held the wounded foot, for a few moments, to the pit of his stomach, and then commenced sucking it. In the mean time, one of the men assigned to us, who had been a surgeon in England before he was transported, was brought up by my friends to examine the wound, which he immediately laid open with a lancet, and then applied some nitric acid to it, after which the blacks continued to suck it as before. About twenty minutes from the time that I had been bitten, I began to feel excessively drowsy, without experiencing any pain or uneasiness, with the exception of a slight nausea of the stomach. This drowsy feeling gradually increased, so that my friends around me had the utmost difficulty in keeping me awake, whilst the most pungent smelling salts applied to my nostrils, did not in the least affect me. During the whole of this paroxysm, I remained perfectly conscious, but at one time my sight was seriously affected, so that, although I had been placed in a chair under the verandah, and the meridian sun threw its rays on the garden palings opposite, every thing, at one time, appeared to me to be enveloped in a kind of mist. About two