“What a strange-looking cane you have, sir!” said a little girl, who was one of the party, and who had entwined her arm round Margrave’s. “Let me look at it.”
“Yes,” said Strahan, “that cane, or rather walking-staff, is worth
looking at. Margrave bought it in Egypt, and declares that it is very
ancient.”
This staff seemed constructed from a reed: looked at, it seemed light,
in the hand it felt heavy; it was of a pale, faded yellow, wrought
with black rings at equal distances, and graven with half obliterated
characters that seemed hieroglyphic. I remembered to have seen Margrave
with it before, but I had never noticed it with any attention until now,
when it was passed from hand to hand. At the head of the cane there was
a large unpolished stone of a dark blue.
“Is this a pebble or a jewel?” asked one of the party.
“I cannot tell you its name or nature,” said Margrave; “but it is said
to cure the bite of serpents(1), and has other supposed virtues,--a
talisman, in short.”
He here placed the staff in my hands, and bade me look at it with care.
Then he changed the conversation and renewed the way, leaving the
staff with me, till suddenly I forced it back on him. I could not have
explained why, but its touch, as it warmed in my clasp, seemed to send
through my whole frame a singular thrill, and a sensation as if I no
longer felt my own weight,--as if I walked on air.
Our rambles came to a close; the visitors went away; I re-entered the
house through the sash-window of Forman’s study. Margrave threw his hat
and staff on the table, and amused himself with examining minutely the
tracery on the mantelpiece. Strahan and myself left him thus occupied,
and, going into the adjoining library, resumed our task of examining the
plans for the new house. I continued to draw outlines and sketches
of various alterations, tending to simplify and contract Sir Philip’s
general design. Margrave soon joined us, and this time took his seat
patiently beside our table, watching me use ruler and compass with
unwonted attention.
“I wish I could draw,” he said; “but I can do nothing useful.”
“Rich men like you,” said Strahan, peevishly, “can engage others,
and are better employed in rewarding good artists than in making bad
drawings themselves.”
“Yes, I can employ others; and--Fenwick, when you have finished with
Strahan I will ask permission to employ you, though without reward; the
task I would impose will not take you a minute.”
He then threw himself back in his chair, and seemed to fall into a doze.
The dressing-bell rang; Strahan put away the plans,--indeed, they were
now pretty well finished and decided on. Margrave woke up as our host
left the room to dress, and drawing me towards another table in the
room, placed before me one of his favourite mystic books, and, pointing
to an old woodcut, said,
“I will ask you to copy this for me; it pretends to be a facsimile of
Solomon’s famous seal. I have a whimsical desire to have a copy of it.
You observe two triangles interlaced and inserted in a circle?--the
pentacle, in short. Yes, just so. You need not add the astrological
characters: they are the senseless superfluous accessories of the
dreamer who wrote the book. But the pentacle itself has an intelligible
meaning; it belongs to the only universal language, the language of
symbol, in which all races that think--around, and above, and below
us--can establish communion of thought. If in the external universe any
one constructive principle can be detected, it is the geometrical;
and in every part of the world in which magic pretends to a written
character, I find that its hieroglyphics are geometrical figures. Is
it not laughable that the most positive of all the sciences should thus
lend its angles and circles to the use of--what shall I call it?--the
ignorance?--ay, that is the word--the ignorance of dealers in magic?”
He took up the paper, on which I had hastily described the triangles and
the circle, and left the room, chanting the serpent-charmer’s song.
(1) The following description of a stone at Corfu, celebrated as an
antidote to the venom of the serpent’s bite, was given to me by an
eminent scholar and legal functionary in that island:--
DESCRIPTION of THE BLUESTONE.--This stone is of an oval shape 1 2/10 in.
long, 7/10 broad, 3/10 thick, and, having been broken formerly, is now
set in gold.
When a person is bitten by a poisonous snake, the bite must be opened
by a cut of a lancet or razor longways, and the stone applied within
twenty-four hours. The stone then attaches itself firmly on the wound,
and when it has done its office falls off; the cure is then complete.
The stone must then be thrown into milk, whereupon it vomits the poison
it has absorbed, which remains green on the top of the milk, and the
stone is then again fit for use.
This stone has been from time immemorial in the family of Ventura, of
Corfu, a house of Italian origin, and is notorious, so that peasants
immediately apply for its aid. Its virtue has not been impaired by the
fracture. Its nature or composition is unknown.
In a case where two were stung at the same time by serpents, the stone
was applied to one, who recovered; but the other, for whom it could not
be used, died.
It never failed but once, and then it was applied after the twenty-four
hours.
Its colour is so dark as not to be distinguished from black.
P. M. COLQUHOUN.
Corfu, 7th Nov., 1860.
Sir Emerson Tennent, in his popular and excellent work on Ceylon, gives
an account of “snake stones” apparently similar to the one at Corfu,
except that they are “intensely black and highly polished,” and which
are applied, in much the same manner, to the wounds inflicted by the
cobra-capella.
QUERY.-Might it not be worth while to ascertain the chemical properties
of these stones, and, if they be efficacious in the extraction of venom
conveyed by a bite, might they not be as successful if applied to the
bite of a mad dog as to that of a cobra-capella?