Page:Natural History, Reptiles.djvu/176

168 The same spirit of fear which made the Crocodile an object of worship among the ancient Egyptians, made the great Boas to be regarded as deities by the inhabitants of Mexico. Peter Martyr tells of an enormous Serpent-idol which the Spaniards found at Campechy, “compacted of bitumen and small stones incorporated together, which was seven and fortie feete in length, and as thicke as a great oxe.” And Bullock, in his “Six Months in Mexico,” speaks of a noble specimen of a similar idol, almost perfect and of fine workmanship, which is represented in the act of swallowing a human victim, already crushed and struggling in its horrid jaws. That these figures were representations, perhaps somewhat exaggerated, of the form, dimensions, and habits of some of the native Boas, can hardly be doubted, from what we know of these reptiles. Hernandez, who speaks of the formidable powers of the Mexican Serpents, says, that he saw some as thick as a man’s thigh, which had been tamed so completely as to climb amicably about the shoulders of their possessor, or else lay coiled up in a circle as large as a cartwheel, and peacefully received the food presented to them. Such an engine for working on the fears of the besotted multitude, Southey attributes to the Mexican priest in the following noble lines:—

“ On came the mighty snake, And twined, in many a wreath, round Neolin, Darting aright, aleft, his sinuous neck, With searching eye, and lifted jaw and tongue Quivering, and hiss as of a heavy shower Upon the summer woods. The Britons stood Astounded at the powerful reptile’s bulk, And that strange sight. His girth was as of man,