The human victim moulders as the trees moulder,--crumbles and
dissolves as crumbles the substance of the dead palms and
balatas: the Death-of-the-Woods is upon him.

To-day a fer-de-lance is seldom found exceeding six feet length;
but the dimensions of the reptile, at least, would seem to have
been decreased considerably by man's warring upon it since the time
of Père Labat, who mentions having seen a fer-de-lance nine feet long
and five inches in diameter. He also speaks of a _couresse_--a beautiful
and harmless serpent said to kill the fer-de-lance--over ten feet
long and thick as a man's leg; but a large couresse is now seldom
seen. The negro woodsmen kill both creatures indiscriminately;
and as the older reptiles are the least likely to escape
observation, the chances for the survival of extraordinary
individuals lessen with the yearly decrease of forest-area,

... But it may be doubted whether the number of deadly snakes has
been greatly lessened since the early colonial period. Each
female produces viviparously from forty to sixty young at a
birth. The favorite haunts of the fer-de-lance are to a large
extent either inaccessible or unexplored, and its multiplication
is prodigious. It is really only the surplus of its swarming
that overpours into the cane-fields, and makes the public roads
dangerous after dark;--yet more than three hundred snakes have
been killed in twelve months on a single plantation. The
introduction of the Indian mongoos, or _mangouste_ (ichneumon),
proved futile as a means of repressing the evil. The mangouste
kills the fer-de-lance when it has a chance but it also kills
fowls and sucks their eggs, which condemns it irrevocably with
the country negroes, who live to a considerable extent by raising