The Distracted Victim, Instead Of
Flying Its Enemy, Seems To Be Arrested By Some Invincible Power; It
Screams; Now Approaches,
And then recedes; and after skipping about
with unaccountable agitation, finally rushes into the jaws of the
snake, and is
Swallowed, as soon as it is covered with a slime or
glue to make it slide easily down the throat of the devourer.
One anecdote I must relate, the circumstances of which are as true
as they are singular. One of my constant walks when I am at leisure,
is in my lowlands, where I have the pleasure of seeing my cattle,
horses, and colts. Exuberant grass replenishes all my fields, the
best representative of our wealth; in the middle of that tract I
have cut a ditch eight feet wide, the banks of which nature adorns
every spring with the wild salendine, and other flowering weeds,
which on these luxuriant grounds shoot up to a great height. Over
this ditch I have erected a bridge, capable of bearing a loaded
waggon; on each side I carefully sow every year some grains of hemp,
which rise to the height of fifteen feet, so strong and so full of
limbs as to resemble young trees: I once ascended one of them four
feet above the ground. These produce natural arbours, rendered often
still more compact by the assistance of an annual creeping plant
which we call a vine, that never fails to entwine itself among their
branches, and always produces a very desirable shade.
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