stood out sharp against the clear unspotted amber sky. And as I watched
them, I suddenly became aware that I was myself observed with interest
by a dusky individual, who was squatted just in front of me, and who
rose, salaaming, when he saw that I was awake. It appeared that I had,
so to say, fallen into a "nest of vipers;" that I had unwittingly
invaded the premises of a snake dealer, who, no doubt for solid reasons,
had made my friendly tomb the temporary repository of his
stock-in-trade.

The Indian snake charmer, _gáruda, hawadiga_[3], or whatever else they
call him, is as a rule but a poor impostor. He goes about with one
fangless cobra, one rock snake, and one miserable mongoose, strangling
at the end of a string. My dweller in tombs was richer than all his
tribe in his snakes, and in his eyes. I have never seen anybody else
with real cat's eyes: eyes with exactly that greenish yellow luminous
glare which you see when you look at a cat in the dark. They gleamed and
rolled in the evening sun, over a row of shining teeth, as their owner
squatted down before me, liberating one after another from little bags
and baskets an amazing multitude of snakes, which he fetched in batches
from the interior of the tomb, till the very ground seemed alive with
them[4]. Some of them he handled only with the greatest respect, and by
means of an iron prong. Outside the Zoo (where they lose in effect) I
never saw so many together before: and it is only when you see a number
of these reptiles together that you realise what a strange uncanny
being, after all, is a snake: and as you watch him, lying, as it were,
in wait, beautiful exceedingly, but with a beauty that inspires you with
a shudder, his eyes full of cruelty and original sin, and his tongue of
culumny and malice, you begin to understand his influence in all
religions. I was wholly absorbed in their snaky evolutions, and buried
in mythological reminiscences, when my _gáruda_ roused me suddenly, by