Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History Part 25

[Footnote 2: _Brit. Mus. Cat_. p. 143; KELAART'S Prod. Faun. Zeylan. p.

183.]

_Crocodile_.--The Portuguese in India, like the Spaniards in South America, affixed the name of _lagarto_ to the huge reptiles which infest the rivers and estuaries of both continents; and to the present day the Europeans in Ceylon apply the term _alligator_ to what are in reality _crocodiles_, which literally swarm in the still waters and tanks throughout the northern provinces, but rarely frequent rapid streams, and have never been found in the marshy elevations among the hills.

Their instincts in Ceylon present no variation from their habits in other countries. There would appear to be two well-distinguished species in the island, the _Allie Kimboola_[1], the Indian crocodile, which inhabits the rivers and estuaries throughout the low countries of the coasts, attaining the length of sixteen or eighteen feet, and which will a.s.sail man when pressed by hunger; and the Marsh crocodile[2], which lives exclusively in fresh water, frequenting the tanks in the northern and central provinces, and confining its attacks to the smaller animals: in length it seldom exceeds twelve or thirteen feet. Sportsmen complain that their dogs are constantly seized by both species; and water-fowl, when shot, frequently disappear before they can be secured by the fowler.[3] The Singhalese believe that the crocodile can only move swiftly on sand or smooth clay, its feet being too tender to tread firmly on hard or stony ground. In the dry season, when the watercourses begin to fail and the tanks become exhausted, the Marsh crocodiles are sometimes encountered wandering in search of water in the jungle; but generally, during the extreme drought, when unable to procure their ordinary food from the drying up of the watercourses, they bury themselves in the mud, and remain in a state of torpor till released by the recurrence of the rains.[4] At Arne-tivoe, in the eastern province, whilst riding across the parched bed of the tank, I was shown the recess, still bearing the form and impress of the crocodile, out of which the animal had been seen to emerge the day before. A story was also related to me of an officer attached to the department of the Surveyor-General, who, having pitched his tent in a similar position, had been disturbed during the night by feeling a movement of the earth below his bed, from which on the following day a crocodile emerged, making its appearance from beneath the matting.[5]

[Footnote 1: Crocodilus biporcatus. _Cuvier._]

[Footnote 2: Crocodilus pal.u.s.tris, _Less_.]

[Footnote 3: In Siam the flesh of the crocodile is sold for food in the markets and bazaars. "Un jour je vis plus de cinquante crocodiles, pet.i.ts et grands, attaches aux colonnes de leurs maisons. Ils les vendent la chair comme on vendrait de la chair de porc, mais a bien meilleur marche."--PALLEGOIX, _Siam_, vol. i. p. 174.]

[Footnote 4: HERODOTUS records the observations of the Egyptians that the crocodile of the Nile abstains from food during the four winter months.--_Euterpe_, lviii.]

[Footnote 5: HUMBOLDT relates a similar story as occurring at Calabazo, in Venezuela.--_Personal Narrative_, c. xvi.]

The species which inhabits the fresh water is essentially cowardly in its instincts, and hastens to conceal itself on the appearance of man. A gentleman (who told me the circ.u.mstance), when riding in the jungle, overtook a crocodile, evidently roaming in search of water. It fled to a shallow pool almost dried by the sun, and, thrusting its head into the mud till it covered up its eyes, it remained unmoved in profound confidence of perfect concealment. In 1833, during the progress of the Pearl Fishery, Sir Robert Wilmot Horton employed men to drag for crocodiles in a pond which was infested with them in the immediate vicinity of Aripo. The pool was about fifty yards in length, by ten or twelve wide, shallowing gradually to the edge, and not exceeding four or five feet in the deepest part. As the party approached the bund, from twenty to thirty reptiles, which had been basking in the sun, rose and fled to the water. A net, specially weighted so as to sink its lower edge to the bottom, was then stretched from bank to bank and swept to the further end of the pond, followed by a line of men with poles to drive the crocodiles forward: so complete was the arrangement, that no individual could evade the net, yet, to the astonishment of the Governor's party, not one was to be found when it was drawn on sh.o.r.e, and no means of escape was apparent or possible except descending into the mud at the bottom of the pond.[1]

[Footnote 1: A remarkable instance of the vitality of the common crocodile, _C. biporcatus_, was related to me by a gentleman at Galle: he had caught on a baited hook an unusually large one, which his coolies disembowelled, the aperture in the stomach being left expanded by a stick placed across it. On returning in the afternoon with a view to secure the head, they found that the creature had crawled for some distance, and made its escape into the water.]

TESTUDINATA. _Tortoise_,--Of the _testudinata_ the land tortoises are numerous, but present no remarkable features beyond the beautiful marking of the starred variety[1], which is common, in the north-western province around Putlam and Chilaw, and is distinguished by the bright yellow rays which diversify the deep black of its dorsal s.h.i.+eld. From one of these which was kept in my garden I took a number of flat ticks (_Ixodes_), which adhered to its fleshy neck in such a position as to baffle any attempt of the animal itself to remove them; but as they were exposed to constant danger of being crushed against the plastron during the protrusion and retraction of the head, each was covered with a h.o.r.n.y case almost as resistant as the carapace of the tortoise itself. Such an adaptation of structure is scarcely less striking than that of the parasites found on the spotted lizard of Berar by Dr. Hooker, each of which presented the distinct colour of the scale to which it adhered.[2]

[Footnote 1: Testudo stellata, _Schweig_.]

[Footnote 2: HOOKER'S _Himalayan Journals_, vol. i. p. 37.]

The marshes and pools of the interior are frequented by the terrapins[1], which the natives are in the habit of keeping alive in wells under the conviction that they clear them of impurities. The edible turtle[2] is found on all the coasts of the island, and sells for a few s.h.i.+llings or a few pence, according to its size and abundance at the moment. At certain seasons the turtle on the south-western coast of Ceylon is avoided as poisonous, and some lamentable instances are recorded of death which was ascribed to their use. At Pantura, to the south of Colombo, twenty-eight persons who had partaken of turtle in October, 1840, were seized with sickness immediately, after which coma succeeded, and eighteen died during the night. Those who survived said there was nothing unusual in the appearance of the flesh except that it was fatter than ordinary. Other similarly fatal occurrences have been attributed to turtle curry; but as they have never been proved to proceed exclusively from that source, there is room for believing that the poison may have been contained in some other ingredient. In the Gulf of Manaar turtle is frequently found of such a size as to measure between four and five feet in length; and on one occasion, in riding along the sea-sh.o.r.e north of Putlam, I saw a man in charge of some sheep, resting under the shade of a turtle sh.e.l.l, which he had erected on sticks to protect him from the sun--almost verifying the statement of aelian, that in the seas off Ceylon there are tortoises so large that several persons may find ample shelter beneath a single sh.e.l.l.[3]

[Footnote 1: _Emyda Ceylonensis_, GRAY, _Catalogue_, p. 64, tab. 29 a.; _Mag. Nat. Hist._ p. 265: 1856. Dr. KELAART, in his _Prodromus_ (p.

179), refers this to the common Indian species, _E. punctata_; but Dr.

Gray has shown it to be a distinct one. It is generally distributed in the lower parts of Ceylon, in lakes and tanks. It is put into wells to act the part of a scavenger. By the Singhalese it is named _Kiri-ibba_.]

[Footnote 2: Chelonia virgata, _Schweig_.]

[Footnote 3: "Tiktontai de ara en taute te thalatte, kai chelonai megintai, onper oun ta elytra orophoi ginontai kai gar esti kai mentekaideka pechon en cheloneion, hos hypoikein ouk oligous, kai tous helious pyroiestatous apostegei, kai skian asmetois parechei."--Lib.

xvi. c. 17. aelian copied this statement literatim from MEGASTHENES, _Indica Frag_. lix. 31; and may not Megasthenes have referred to some tradition connected with the gigantic fossilised species discovered on the Sewalik Hills, the remains of which are now in the Museum at the East India House?]

The hawksbill turtle[1], which supplies the tortoise-sh.e.l.l of commerce, was at former times taken in great numbers in the vicinity of Hambangtotte during the season when they came to deposit their eggs, and there is still a considerable trade in this article, which is manufactured into ornaments, boxes, and combs by the Moormen resident at Galle. If taken from the animal after death and decomposition, the colour of the sh.e.l.l becomes clouded and milky, and hence the cruel expedient is resorted to of seizing the turtles as they repair to the sh.o.r.e to deposit their eggs, and suspending them over fires till heat makes the plates on the dorsal s.h.i.+elds start from the bone of the carapace, after which the creature is permitted to escape to the water.[2] In ill.u.s.tration of the resistless influence of instinct at the period of breeding, it may be mentioned that the same tortoise is believed to return again and again to the same spot, notwithstanding that at each visit she had to undergo a repet.i.tion of this torture. In the year 1826, a hawksbill turtle was taken near Hambangtotte, which bore a ring attached to one of its fins that had been placed there by a Dutch officer thirty years before, with a view to establish the fact of these recurring visits to the same beach.[3]

[Footnote 1: Chelonia imbricata; _Linn_.]

[Footnote 2: At Celebes, whence the finest tortoise-sh.e.l.l is exported to China, the natives kill the turtle by blows on the head, and immerse the sh.e.l.l in boiling water to detach the plates. Dry heat is only resorted to by the unskilful, who frequently destroy the tortoise-sh.e.l.l in the operation.--_Journ. Indian Archipel._ vol. iii. p. 227, 1849.]

[Footnote 3: BENNETT'S _Ceylon_, ch. x.x.xiv.]

_Snakes_.--It is perhaps owing to the aversion excited by the ferocious expression and unusual action of serpents, combined with an instinctive dread of attack, that exaggerated ideas prevail both as to their numbers in Ceylon, and the danger to be apprehended from encountering them. The Singhalese profess to distinguish a great many kinds, of which not more than one half have as yet been scientifically identified; but so cautiously do serpents make their appearance, that the surprise of long residents is invariably expressed at the rarity with which they are to be seen; and from my own journeys, through the jungle, often of two to five hundred miles, I have frequently returned without seeing a single snake.[1] Davy, whose attention was carefully directed to the poisonous serpents of Ceylon[2], came to the conclusion that but _four_, out of twenty species examined by him, were venomous, and that of these only two (the _tic-polonga[3]_ and _cobra de capello_[4]) were capable of inflicting a wound likely to be fatal to man. The third is the _caraicilla_[5], a brown snake of about twelve inches in length; and for the fourth, of which only a few specimens have been, procured, the Singhalese have no name in their vernacular,--a proof that it is neither deadly nor abundant.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Bennett, who resided much in the south-east of the island, ascribes the rarity of serpents in the jungle to the abundance of the wild peafowl, whose partiality to snakes renders them the chief destroyers of these reptiles.]

[Footnote 2: See DAVY'S _Ceylon_, ch. xiv.]

[Footnote 3: Dabois elegans, _Grey_.]

[Footnote 4: Naja tripadians, _Gunther_.]

[Footnote 5: Trigonocephalus hypnale, _Wegl_.]

_Cobra de Capello_.--The cobra de capello is the only one exhibited by the itinerant snake-charmers: and the accuracy of Davy's conjecture, that they control it, not by extracting its fangs, but by courageously availing themselves of its accustomed timidity and extreme reluctance to use its fatal weapons, received a painful confirmation during my residence in Ceylon, by the death of one of these performers, whom his audience had provoked to attempt some unaccustomed familiarity with the cobra; it bit him on the wrist, and he expired the same evening. The hill near Kandy, on which the official residences of the Governor and Colonial Secretary had been built, is covered in many places with the deserted nests of the white ants (_termites_), and these are the favourite retreats of the sluggish and spiritless cobra, which watches from their apertures the toads and lizards on which it preys. Here, when I have repeatedly come upon them, their only impulse was concealment; and on one occasion, when a cobra of considerable length could not escape sufficiently quickly, owing to the bank being nearly precipitous on both sides of the road, a few blows from my whip were sufficient to deprive it of life. There is a rare variety which the natives fancifully designate the "king of the cobras;" it has the head and the anterior half of the body of so light a colour, that at a distance it seems like a silvery white.[1] A gentleman who held a civil appointment at Kornegalle, had a servant who was bitten by a snake, and he informed me that on enlarging a hole near the foot of the tree under which the accident occurred, he unearthed a cobra of upwards of three feet long, and so purely white as to induce him to believe that it was an albino.

With the exception of the rat-snake[2], the cobra de capello is the only serpent which seems from choice to frequent the vicinity of human dwellings, but it is doubtless attracted by the young of the domestic fowl and by the moisture of the wells and drainage. The Singhalese remark that if one cobra be destroyed near a house, its companion is almost certain to be discovered immediately after,--a popular belief which I had an opportunity of verifying on more than one occasion. Once, when a snake of this description was killed in a bath of Government House at Colombo, its mate was found in the same spot the day after; and again, at my own stables, a cobra of five feet long, having fallen into the well, which was too deep to permit its escape, its companion of the same size was found the same morning in an adjoining drain.[3] On this occasion the snake, which had been several hours in the well, swam with ease, raising its head and hood above water; and instances have repeatedly occurred of the cobra de capello voluntarily taking considerable excursions by sea. When the "Wellington," a government vessel employed in the conservancy of the pearl banks, was anch.o.r.ed about a quarter of a mile from land, in the bay of Koodremale, a cobra was seen, about an hour before sunset, swimming vigorously towards the s.h.i.+p. It came within twelve yards, when the sailors a.s.sailed it with billets of wood and other missiles, and forced it to return to land. The following morning they discovered the track which it had left on the sh.o.r.e, and traced it along the sand till it disappeared in the jungle.[4] On a later occasion, in the vicinity of the same spot, when the "Wellington" was lying at some distance from the sh.o.r.e, a cobra was found and killed on board, where it could only have gained access by climbing up the cable. It was first discovered by a sailor, who felt the chill as it glided over his foot.[5]

[Footnote 1: A Singhalese work, the _Sarpa Doata_, quoted in the _Ceylon Times_, January, 1857, enumerates four species of the cobra;--the _raja_, or king; the _velyander_, or trader; the _baboona_, or hermit; and the _goore_, or agriculturist. The young cobras, it says, are not venomous till after the thirteenth day, when they shed their coat for the first time.]

[Footnote 2: Coryphodon Blumenbachii. WOLF, in his interesting story of his _Life and Adventures in Ceylon_, mentions that rat-snakes were often so domesticated by the natives as to feed at their table. He says: "I once saw an example of this in the house of a native. It being meal time, he called his snake, which immediately came forth from the roof under which he and I were sitting. He gave it victuals from his own dish, which the snake took of itself from off a fig-leaf that was laid for it, and ate along with its host. When it had eaten its fill, he gave it a kiss and bade it go to its hole."

Since the above was written, Major Skinner, writing to me 12th Dec.

1858, mentions the still more remarkable case of the domestication of the cobra de capello in Ceylon. "Did you ever hear," he says, "of tame cobras being kept and domesticated about a house, going in and out at pleasure, and in common with the rest of the inmates? In one family, near Negombo, cobras are kept as protectors, in the place of dogs, by a wealthy man who has always large sums of money in his house. But this is not a solitary case of the kind. I heard of it only the other day, but from undoubtedly good authority. The snakes glide about the house, a terror to thieves, but never attempting to harm the inmates."]

[Footnote 3: PLINY notices the affection that subsists between the male and female asp; and that if one of them happens to be killed, the other seeks to avenge its death.--Lib. viii. c. 37.]

[Footnote 4: STEWART'S _Account of the Pearl Fisheries of Ceylon_, p. 9: Colombo, 1843.

The Python reticulatus (the "rock-snake") has been known like the cobra de capello, to make short voyages at sea. One was taken on board H.M.S.

"Hastings," when off the coast of Burmah, in 1853; it is now in the possession of the surgeon, Dr. Scott.]

[Footnote 5: SWAINSON, in his _Habits and Instincts of Animals_, c. iv.

p. 187, says that instances are well attested of the common English snake having been met with in the open channel; between the coast of Wales and the island of Anglesea, as if they had taken their departure from the one and were bound for the other.]

In BENNETT'S account of "_Ceylon and its Capabilities_" there is a curious piece of Singhalese folk-lore, to the effect, that the cobra de capello every time it expends its poison _loses a joint of its tail_, and eventually acquires a head which resembles that of a toad. A recent discovery of Dr. Kelaart has thrown light on the origin of this popular fallacy. The family of "false snakes" (_pseudo-typhlops_), as Schlegel names the group, have till lately consisted of but three species, one only of which was known to inhabit Ceylon. They belong to a family intermediate between the lizards and serpents with the body of the latter, and the head of the former, with which they are moreover identified by having the upper jaw fixed to the skull as in mammals and birds, instead of movable as amongst the true ophidians. In this they resemble the amphisbaenidae; but the tribe of _Uropeltidae_, or "rough tails," has the further peculiarity, that the tail is truncated, instead of ending, like that of the typhlops, in a point more or less acute; and the reptile a.s.sists its own movements by pressing the flat end to the ground. Within a very recent period an important addition has been made to this genus, by the discovery of five new species in Ceylon; in some of which the singular construction of the tail is developed to an extent much more marked than in any previously existing specimen. One of these, the _Uropeltis grandis_ of Kelaart, is distinguished by its dark brown colour, shot with a bluish metallic l.u.s.tre, closely approaching the ordinary shade of the cobra; and the tail is abruptly and flatly compressed as though it had been severed by a knife. The form of this singular reptile will be best understood by a reference to the accompanying figure; and there can be, I think, little doubt that to its strange and anomalous structure is to be traced the fable of the transformation of the cobra de capello. The colour alone would seem to identify the two reptiles, but the head and mouth are no longer those of a serpent, and the disappearance of the tail might readily suggest the mutilation which the tradition a.s.serts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: UROPELTIS GRANDIS]

The Singhalese Buddhists, in their religious abstinence from inflicting death on any creature, are accustomed, after securing a venomous snake, to enclose it in a basket of woven palm leaves, and to set it afloat on a river. During my residence in Ceylon, I never heard of the death of a European which was caused by the bite of a snake; and in the returns of coroners' inquests which were made officially to my department, such accidents to the natives appear chiefly to have happened at night, when the animal having been surprised or trodden on, had inflicted the wound in self-defence.[1] For these reasons the Singhalese, when obliged to leave their houses in the dark, carry a stick with a loose ring, the noise[2] of which as they strike it on the ground is sufficient to warn the snakes to leave their path.

[Footnote 1: In a return of 112 coroners' inquests, in cases of death from wild animals, held in Ceylon in five years, from 1851 to 1855 inclusive, 68 are ascribed to the bites of serpents; and in almost every instance the a.s.sault is set down as having taken place _at night_. The majority of the sufferers were children and women.]

[Footnote 2: PLINY notices that the serpent has the sense of hearing more acute than that of sight; and that it is more frequently put in motion by the sound of footsteps than by the appearance of the intruder, "excitatur pede saepius."--Lib. viii. c. 36.]

_The Python_.--The great python[1] (the "boa," as it is commonly designated by Europeans, the "anaconda" of Eastern story), which is supposed to crush the bones of an elephant, and to swallow the tiger, is found, though not of so portentous dimensions, in the cinnamon gardens within a mile of the fort of Colombo, where it feeds on hog-deer and other smaller animals.

[Footnote 1: Python reticulatus, _Gray_.]

The natives occasionally take it alive, and securing it to a pole expose it for sale as a curiosity. One which was brought to me in this way measured seventeen feet with a proportionate thickness: but another which crossed my path on a coffee estate on the Peac.o.c.k Mountain at Pusilawa, considerably exceeded these dimensions. Another which I watched in the garden at Elie House, near Colombo, surprised me by the ease with which it erected itself almost perpendicularly in order to scale a wall upwards of ten feet high.

Of ten species which ascend the trees to search for squirrels and lizards, and to rifle the nests of birds, one half, including the green _carawilla_, and the deadly _tic polonga_, are believed by the natives to be venomous; but the fact is very dubious. I have heard of the cobra being found on the crown of a coco-nut palm, attracted, it was said, by the toddy which was flowing at the time, as it was the season for drawing it.

_Water-Snakes_.--The fresh-water snakes, of which four species have been described as inhabiting the still water and pools, are all harmless in Ceylon. A gentleman, who found near a river an agglutinated cl.u.s.ter of the eggs of one variety _(Tropidonotus umbratus)_, placed them under a gla.s.s shade on his drawing-room table, where one by one the young serpents emerged from the sh.e.l.l to the number of twenty.

The use of the Pamboo-Kaloo, or snake-stone, as a remedy in cases of wounds by venomous serpents, has probably been communicated to the Singhalese by the itinerant snake-charmers who resort to the island from the coast of Coromandel; and more than one well-authenticated instance of its successful application has been told to me by persons who had been eye-witnesses to what they described. On one occasion, in March, 1854, a friend of mine was riding, with some other civil officers of the government, along a jungle path in the vicinity of Bintenne, when they saw one of two Tamils, who were approaching them, suddenly dart into the forest and return, holding in both hands a cobra de capello which he had seized by the head and tail. He called to his companion for a.s.sistance to place it in their covered basket, but, in doing this, he handled it so inexpertly that it seized him by the finger, and retained its hold for a few seconds, as if unable to retract its fangs. The blood flowed, and intense pain appeared to follow almost immediately; but, with all expedition, the friend of the sufferer undid his waistcloth, and took from it two snake-stones, each of the size of a small almond, intensely black and highly polished, though of an extremely light substance. These he applied one to each wound inflicted by the teeth of the serpent, to which the stones attached themselves closely, the blood that oozed from the bites being rapidly imbibed by the porous texture of the article applied. The stones adhered tenaciously for three or four minutes, the wounded man's companion in the meanwhile rubbing his arm downwards from the shoulder towards the fingers. At length the snake-stones dropped off of their own accord; the suffering of the man appeared to have subsided; he twisted his fingers till the joints cracked, and went on his way without concern. Whilst this had been going on, another Indian of the party who had come up took from his bag a small piece of white wood, which resembled a root, and pa.s.sed it gently near the head of the cobra, which the latter immediately inclined close to the ground; he then lifted the snake without hesitation, and coiled it into a circle at the bottom of his basket. The root by which he professed to be enabled to perform this operation with safety he called the _Naya-thalee Kalinga_ (the root of the snake-plant), protected by which he professed his ability to approach any reptile with impunity.