Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/70

 Dr. Southey, a man of universal reading, laments that we have been less curious respecting the modes by which the human body is rendered proof against the poison of venomous serpents, than in learning from savages the modes of preparing their destructive drugs. Hasselquist, who was altogether of the same opinion, assiduously endeavoured, during his residence in Egypt, to extract from the Psylli the secret of their profession, a secret which has been religiously preserved during two thousand years; but, as he could offer these serpent-charmers no equivalent for the danger they would have incurred by imparting it, for they must inevitably have provoked the enmity of their brethren, his efforts were necessarily unsuccessful. It is customary with persons who affect superior wisdom to make short work with all affairs of this kind, by putting on an air of absolute incredulity, by which they would intimate that they have fathomed the secrets of nature, and are perfectly competent to prescribe the limits beyond which her operations cannot pass. These sages, on the subject of the Psylli, at once cut the Gordian knot by asserting that before they take any liberties with venomous serpents, they carefully extract the tooth to which the poison bag is attached, and thus, with all their boasted skill, perform nothing more marvellous than those who handle live eels. This, however, is not the fact. Hasselquist examined the serpents upon which they had exerted the force of their charms, and found that the poison-*tooth had not been extracted.

The most favourable time for observing the performances of these singular people is in the month of July, when the violent heat of summer hatches myriads of serpents, scorpions, lizards, and every abominable reptile among the sands of Egypt, and sends them forth rejoicing in the vigour of their youth and the potency of their virgin poisons. About the beginning of this month a female serpent