Sketches From My Life

d harbour are unequalled throughout the whole universe. Still, like the Bosphorus, the finest effect is made by Rio de Janeiro when looked at fro

are only a few snipe to be found here and there, and while looking for these you must beware of snakes and other venomous reptiles, which abound both in the country and in town. I remember a terrible fright a large picnic party, at which I assisted, was thrown into while lunching in the garden of a villa, almost in the town o

boy dead on the ground, one of these big snakes lying within a foot or so of him, also dead; the snake had a poisoned arrow in his brain, which evidently had been shot at him by the poor

ons to resent affronts offered to either of them. She narrates that a peasant once killed a big anaconda, and that the other, or chum snake, followed the man several miles to the house where he

. There is very little poverty except among the free blacks, who are lazy and idle and somewhat vicious. I always have believed that the black man is an inferior animal-in fact, that the dark races are meant to be drawers of water and hewers of wood. I do not deny that they have souls to be saved, but I believe that t

n great numbers. As may be imagined, this report created a real panic among the painters, for I believe we all feared a shark more than an enemy armed to the teeth. I at once made a hurried movement to get off my plank. As I did so the rope at one end slipped off, and so threw the piece of wood, to which I had to hang as on a rope, up and down the vessel's side, bringing my feet to within a very few inches of the water. On looking downwards I saw a great shark in the water, almost within snapping distance of my legs. I can swear that my hair stood on end with fear; though I held on like grim death, I felt myself going, yes, going, little by little right into the beast's jaws. At that moment, only just in time, a rope was thrown over my head from the deck above me, and I was pulled from my fearfully perilous position, more dead than alive. Now for revenge on the brutes who would have eaten me if they could! It was a dead calm, the sharks were still swimming round the ship waiting for their prey. We got a lot of hooks wi

t the water is deeply tinged with blood on the spot where the unfortunate man disappeared. These ravenous man-eaters scent blood from an enormous distance, and their prominent upper fin, which is generally out of the water as t

and chain quite perfect. Could it have been that some poor wretch had been

kes a large knife and diving under the shark cuts its bowels open. If the water is deep the shark can go lower down than the man and so save himself,