After proceeding several hundred yards through the cypress swamp, I saw
some spots of sky in front of us. This indicated an opening in the
woods, and for that I saw my guide was heading. I was not surprised on
reaching this opening to find that it was the glade--again the fatal
glade!
To my eyes how changed its aspect! I could not bear the bright sun that
gleamed into it. The sheen of its flowers wearied my sight--their
perfume made me sick!
Maybe I only fancied this. I was sick, but from a very different cause.
The poison was mingling with my blood. It was setting my veins on
fire. I was tortured by a choking sensation of thirst, and already felt
that spasmodic compression of the chest, and difficulty of breathing--
the well-known symptoms experienced by the victims of snake-poison.
It may be that I only fancied most of this. I knew that a venomous
serpent had bitten me; and that knowledge may have excited my
imagination to an extreme susceptibility. Whether the symptoms did in
reality exist, I suffered them all the same. My fancy had all the
painfulness of reality!
My companion directed me to be seated. Moving about, he said, was not
good. He desired me to be calm and patient, once more begging me to
"truss Gabr'l."
I resolved to be quiet, though patient I could not be. My peril was too
great.
Physically I obeyed him. I sat down upon a log--that same log of the
liriodendron--and under the shade of a spreading dogwood-tree. With all
the patience I could command, I sat awaiting the orders of the
snake-doctor. He had gone off a little way, and was now wandering
around the glade with eyes bent upon the ground. He appeared to be
searching for something.
"Some plant," thought I, "he expects to find growing there."
I watched his movements with more than ordinary interest. I need hardly
have said this. It would have been sufficient to say that I felt my
life depended on the result of his search. His success or his failure
were life or death to me.
How my heart leaped when I saw him bend forward, and then stoop still
lower, as if clutching something upon the ground! An exclamation of joy
that escaped his lips was echoed in a louder key from my own; and,
forgetting his directions to remain quiet, I sprang up from the log, and
ran towards him.
As I approached he was upon his knees, and with his knife-blade was
digging around a plant, as if to raise it by the roots. It was a small
herbaceous plant, with erect simple stem, oblong lanceolate leaves, and
a terminal spike of not very conspicuous white flowers. Though I knew
it not then, it was the famed "snake-root" (_Polygala senega_).
In a few moments he had removed the earth, and then, drawing out the
plant, shook its roots free of the mould. I noticed that a mass of
woody contorted rhizomes, somewhat thicker than those of the
sarsaparilla briar, adhered to the stem. They were covered with
ash-coloured bark, and quite inodorous. Amid the fibres of these roots
lay the antidote to the snake-poison--in their sap was the saviour of my
rife!
Not a moment was lost in preparing them. There were no hieroglyphics
nor Latinic phraseology employed in the prescription of the
snake-charmer. It was comprised in the phrase, "_Chaw it_!" and, along
with this simple direction, a piece of the root scraped clear of the
bark was put into my hand. I did as I was desired, and in a moment I
had reduced the root to a pulp, and was swallowing its sanitary juices.
The taste was at first rather sweetish, and engendered a slight feeling
of nausea; but, as I continued to chew, it became hot and pungent,
producing a peculiar tingling sensation in the fauces and throat.
The black now ran to the nearest brook, filled one of his "brogans" with
water, and, returning, washed my wrist until the tobacco juice was all
removed from the wound. Having himself chewed a number of the leaves of
the plant into a pulpy mass, he placed it directly upon the bitten part,
and then bound up the wound as before.
Everything was now done that could be done. I was instructed to abide
the result patiently and without fear.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a very short time a profuse perspiration broke out over my whole
body, and I began to expectorate freely. I felt, moreover, a strong
inclination to vomit--which I should have done had I swallowed any more
of the juice, for, taken in large doses, the seneca root is a powerful
emetic.
But of the feelings I experienced at that moment, the most agreeable was
the belief that _I was cured_!
Strange to say, this belief almost at once impressed my mind with the
force of a conviction. I no longer doubted the skill of the
snake-doctor.