Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/242

 hours after the bite, I had quite recovered, but experienced during the remainder of the day, considerable lassitude and pain in my limbs, as though I had undergone great fatigue.

I do not think that the fangs of any Australian snake could, however, penetrate through an ordinary leader boot. Indeed, in my survey of the brushy and swampy district, adjacent to the lower part of the MacLeay, I have frequently inadvertently trodden upon snakes, or otherwise come into close contact with them, with perfect impunity; and a black snake, on one occasion, seized the foot of one of my men, but could not bite through the boot. The following story respecting the rattlesnake of America, would seem to indicate that leather is, at any rate, no protection from the bite of that kind of serpent. A man had been bitten through his boots by a rattlesnake and died. The boots afterwards descended into the successive possession of two other persons, and killed them both;—and it was then ascertained that an envenomed fang had remained sticking in the leather.

Being on the subject of snakes, I may here mention a very curious sea-snake which I killed about three years ago in Tryal bay. It had been calm for some days previous, and as I was walking by myself along the sands at low tide, I saw, coiled up on the moist sand, a few feet from the surf, a snake of a dusky colour. Surprised to see a reptile of this description in such an unusual position, and having