II

It is not generally known, except to scientists and those who are

acquainted with the subject, that a large percentage of the various

species and varieties of sea snakes are highly venomous. These snakes

must not be confounded with the very numerous species of sea eels,

which, though exceedingly savage and armed with strong needle-pointed

teeth, are all non-venomous, though their bite produces high

inflammation if not at once properly attended to and cleansed by an

antiseptic. The sea snake is a true snake in many respects, having

either laminated scales or a thick corduroyed skin resembling

rudimentary scales. The head is flat, and the general structure of the

body similar to that of the land snake. Whether any of them possess the

true poison glands and fangs I do not know, for although I have killed

many hundreds of them I never took sufficient interest to make a

careful examination; and I was told by a Dutch medical gentleman, long

resident on the coast of Dutch New Guinea, and who had made some

investigation on the subject, that he had failed to discover any poison

sacs or glands in any one of the several snakes he had captured. Yet in

some instances he found what at first appeared to be the two long front

teeth common to venomous land snakes, but on detailed examination these

always proved to be perfectly solid; nevertheless a bite from one of

these sea serpents was generally regarded by the natives as fatal; in

my own experience I know of two such cases, one at the island of Fotuna

in the South Pacific, and the other in Torres Straits.

In Sigavi Harbour, on Fotuna, there is a rock to which vessels

occasionally make fast their stern moorings. In the boat which I sent

away with a line to this rock were several boys, natives of the island,

who went with the crew for amusement. One of them, aged about ten,

jumped out of the boat, and in his hurry fell on his hands and knees,

right on top of a large black and white banded sea snake, which at once

bit him savagely on the wrist, causing the blood to flow from a score

of tiny punctures. The boy at once swam on shore to be treated by a

native; in the evening I heard he was suffering great agony, in the

morning the poor little fellow was dead.

The second instance was near Raine Island, in Torres Straits. A

stalwart young Kanaka, one of the crew of a pearling lugger, was diving

for clam shells on the reef, when a snake about three feet in length

suddenly shot up from below within a foot of his face. In his anger and

disgust he unthinkingly struck it with his hand, and was quickly bitten

on the forefinger. A few hours later he was in a high fever,

accompanied with twitchings of the extremities; then tetanus ensued,

followed by death in forty-eight hours.

Although these sea snakes are common to all tropical seas, they are

most frequent about the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. On any smooth

day they may be seen disporting themselves on the surface, or rising

suddenly from the depths, erect their heads and some inches of their

bodies clear from the water, gaze at the passing vessel, and then

swiftly disappear. In nearly all the Pacific Islands the natives hold

them in detestation and horror, and when one is seen lying coiled up on

a rock sunning itself or crawling over the surface of the reef in

search of food, a stone, accompanied by a curse, is always hurled at

it. In the Ellice Oroup, when catching flying-fish at night, one (or

more) of these horrid serpents is sometimes swept up in the scoop-net

before it can be avoided. They range from six inches to nearly four

feet in length, and all have one feature—a blunted tail-end.

Quite recently much further light has been thrown on the subject by Sir

James Hector, of the Philosophical Society of Wellington, New Zealand.

At one of the Society’s meetings, held in April last, Sir James showed

several specimens of _hydrida_, some from Australasian Seas, others

from the Atlantic. The usual habitat of sea snakes, he said, were the

tropical seas generally, but some had been captured in the

comparatively cold waters of the New Zealand coast, at the Catlins

River. These latter were all yellow-banded; those from the islands of

the Fijian Oroup were black-banded, and those taken from the Australian

coast grey-banded. There were, he said, no fewer than seventy species,

which, without exception, were fanged and provided with glands

secreting a virulent poison. In some of the mountainous islands of the

South Pacific, such as Samoa, Fiji, &c, there were several species of

land snakes, all of which were perfectly harmless, and were familiar to

many people in Australia and New Zealand, through being brought there

in bunches of island bananas—it was singular, he thought, that the sea

snakes alone should be so highly venomous. “They were all characterised

by the flattened or blunted tail, which they used as a steer oar, and

were often found asleep on the surface of the water, lying on their

backs. In this state they were easily and safely captured, being

powerless to strike.” The present writer, who has seen hundreds of

these marine snakes daily for many years, during a long residence in

the Pacific Islands, cannot remember a single instance where he has

seen one of these dangerous creatures asleep _on the water_, though

they may frequently be found lying asleep on the coral reefs, exposing

themselves to the rays of a torrid sun. They usually select some knob

or rounded boulder, from the top of which, when awake, they can survey

the small pools beneath and discern any fish which may be imprisoned

therein. In such case they will glide down into the water with

astonishing rapidity, seize their prey, and after swallowing it, return

to their sun bath. The natives of the Paumotu Archipelago informed me,

however, that they are most active in seeking their prey at night-time,

and are especially fond of flying-fish, which, as is well known, is one

of the swiftest of all ocean fishes. The sea snakes, however, seize

them with the greatest ease, by rising cautiously beneath and fastening

their keen teeth in the fish’s throat or belly. A snake, not two feet

six inches in length, I was assured, can easily swallow a flying-fish

eight inches or ten inches long.

With regard to their habit of lying asleep on their backs on the

surface of the water, it may be that Sir James Hector is alluding to

some particular species, but whether that is so or not Sir James’s

statement must of course be considered authoritative, for there is, I

believe, no higher authority on the subject in the world. Apropos of

these venomous marine serpents I may mention that the Rev. W. W. Gill

in one of his works states that he was informed by the natives of the

Cook’s Group that during the prevalence of very bad weather, when fish

were scarce, the large sea eels would actually crawl ashore, and ascend

the _fala_ (pandanus or screw-pine) trees in search of the small green

lizards which live among the upper part of the foliage. At first I

regarded this merely as a bit of native extravagance of statement, but

in 1882, when I was shipwrecked on Peru (or Francis Island), one of the

Gilbert Group, the local trader, one Frank Voliero, and myself saw one

of these eels engaged in an equally extraordinary pursuit. We were one

evening, after a heavy gale from the westward had been blowing for

three days, examining a rookery of whale birds in search of eggs; the

rookery was situated in a dense thicket scrub on the north end of the

island, and was quite two hundred yards from the sea-shore, though not

more than half that distance from the inside lagoon beach. The storm

had destroyed quite a number of young, half-fledged birds, whose bodies

were lying on the ground, and busily engaged in devouring one of them

was a very large sea eel, as thick as the calf of a man’s leg. Before I

could manage to secure a stick with which to kill the repulsive-looking

creature, it made off through the undergrowth at a rapid pace in the

direction of the lagoon, and when we emerged out into the open in

pursuit, ten minutes later, we were just in time to see it wriggling

down the hard, sloping beach into the water. Instinct evidently made it

seek the nearest water, for none of these large sea eels are ever found

in Peru Lagoon.

Many of the rivers and lakes of the islands of the Western Pacific are

tenanted by eels of great size, which are never, or very seldom, as far

as I could learn, interfered with by the natives, and I have never seen

the people of either the Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, or New Britain

touch an eel as food. The Maories, however, as is well known, are

inordinately fond of eels, which, with putrid shark, constitute one of

their staple articles of diet.

In the few mountainous islands of the vast Caroline Archipelago, in the

North-western Pacific, eels are very plentiful, not only in the

numberless small streams which debouch into the shallow waters enclosed

by the barrier reefs, but also far up on the mountainsides, occupying

little rocky pools of perhaps no larger dimensions than an

ordinary-sized toilet basin, or swimming up and down rivulets hardly

more than two feet across. The natives of Ponapé, the largest island of

the Caroline Group, and of Kusaie (Strong’s Island), its eastern

outlier, regard the fresh-water eel with shuddering aversion, and

should a man accidentally touch one with his foot when crossing a

stream he will utter an exclamation of horror and fear. In the heathen

days—down to 1845-50—the eel (tôan) was an object of worship, and

constantly propitiated by sacrifices of food, on account of its

malevolent powers; personal contact was rigidly avoided; to touch one,

even by the merest accident, was to bring down the most dreadful

calamities on the offender and his family—bodily deformities,

starvation and poverty, and death; and although the natives of Strong’s

Island are now both civilised and Christianised, and a training college

of the Boston Board of Missions has long been established at Port Lelé,

they still manifest the same superstitious dread of the eel as in their

days of heathendom. I well remember witnessing an instance of this

terror during my sojourn on the island when I was shipwrecked there in

1874. I had taken up my residence in the picturesque little village of

Leassé, on the western or “lee” side, when I was one evening visited by

several of the ship’s company—a Fijian half-caste, a white man, and two

natives of Pleasant Island. At the moment they arrived I was in the

house of the native pastor—a man who had received an excellent

education in a missionary college at Honolulu, in the Hawaiian

Islands—instructing him and his family in the art of making _taka_, or

cinnet sandals, as practised by the natives of the Tokelau Group. Just

then the four seamen entered, each man triumphantly holding up a large

eel: in an instant there was a united howl of horror from the parson

and his family, as they made a rash for the door, overturning the lamp

and nearly setting the house on fire. In vain I followed and urged them

to return, and told them that the men had gone away and taken the

_tôan_ with them—nothing would induce them to enter the house that

night, and the whole family slept elsewhere.

One singular thing about the eels on Strong’s Island is that they

hibernate, in a fashion, on the sides or even summits of the high

mountains, at an altitude of nearly two thousand feet. Selecting, or

perhaps making, a depression in the soft, moss-covered soil, the ugly

creatures fit themselves into it compactly and remain there for weeks

or even months at a time. I have counted as many as thirty of these

holes, all tenanted, within a few square yards. Some were quite

concealed by vegetable _débris_ or moss, others were exposed to view,

with the broad, flat head of the slippery occupant resting on the

margin or doubled back upon its body. They showed no alarm, but if

poked with a stick would extricate themselves and crawl slowly away.

In the streams they were very voracious, and I had a special antipathy

to them, on account of their preying so on the crayfish—a crustacean of

which I was particularly fond, and which the natives also liked very

much, but were afraid to capture for fear their hands might come in

contact with the dreaded _tôan_.

One afternoon I was plucking a pigeon I had just shot by the margin of

a mountain stream. After removing the viscera, I put the bird in the

water to clean it properly, and was shaking it gently to and fro, when

it was suddenly torn out of my hand by a disgustingly bloated,

reddish-coloured eel about four feet in length, and quickly swallowed.

That one pigeon had cost me two hours’ tramping through the

rain-soddened mountain forest, so loading my gun I followed the thief

down stream to where the water was but a few inches deep, and then blew

his head off.