Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/71

 *charmer, understanding his desire to possess specimens of some of the most deadly of the subjects, went forth into the fields, accompanied by an Arab, and took up specimens of four different species, that is, of the common viper, the cerastes of Alpinus, the jaculus, and a kind of sea-serpent, which she brought to our traveller. The French consul, and all the French in Cairo who happened to be present on her arrival, were struck with terror; and crowds of people immediately collected to behold this daring magician, for as such she was regarded, handle with careless impunity reptiles which no other person present would have touched for the wealth of the universe. In thrusting them into a bottle she held them in her hand as she would have held her stay-lace (if she had had one); and when they crept out again, not admiring their close lodgings, and apparently irritated at the attempt to imprison them, she still seized them with the same coolness, and thrust them in as before.

That these Psylli, for they are doubtless the same race with those who exhibited the force of their spells over the serpent tribes in ancient Rome, possess some important secret there seems to be no reasonable ground for doubting, and it seems equally probable that it might be extorted from them by the force of that golden spell which commands all others; but all that Hasselquist was able to learn was, that the serpent-charmers carefully avoided all other venomous reptiles, such as scorpions, lizards, &c., while those whose profession it was to deal with the latter kept aloof with equal solicitude from the contact of serpents; that, previously to their going out in quest of their prey, they never failed to devour a quantity of serpents' flesh, both boiled and roasted; and that, in addition to all this, they had a number of superstitious practices, among which the most efficacious was the being spitten upon by their sheikh; though Hasselquist seriouslv opines that