SNAKES.— SUPEKSTITIONS. 243 at the head of my bed seemed to glide with its cold belly over my face ; in terror I sprung up, and thought I had been struck over the shin with a club, when the big serpent, now in its death agonies, gave me a stroke with its tail through the open door of the recuba, before which some of the servants sat on their heels telling tales of spirits, snake-kings, &c.

Next morning, when we called on our servants to take down the snakes to skin and stuff them, and told them not to spare the alum and arsenical soap, to our great astonishment they refused to work. We soon perceived they had been told by some bigot that this was an unclean work for a Mussulman : as at the moment there was nothing better for it, if wo would not allow the sun to ruin this fine specimen of a python, we ourselves, though much disgusted, set to work on the job. As soon as the servants saw that we were not ashamed of such work, first one came and then the other, and took the assala to themselves, and worked all the more diligently on our promising them a pot of merissa. This serpent, like all large snakes, is called assala. Not long after, we received a similar snake of half a foot in diameter, but only ninci feet in length, that had a short tail, like the Vipera cerastes ; this they also called assala, and held it to be one of those beforementioned sliort thick snakes, that swallow men. The marking of the skins of the two snakes showed little difference, but the head of the latter was the broader of the two.

As we here meet with people of all nations of the world, we hear many things, but with all the praise of their own native country, however small, is ever the favourite theme. Abdin Bey told us that in his country, Albania, Avere to be found flying snakes. He has a black ser{K'nt's horn, that seems to be an artificially blackened large tooth, and a stone out of the jawbone of an as?«. To make oneself proof against poisons, as well as the bite of numerous reptiles, one has only with a sabre to slice off a piecr of an Aggem, i. e. a heretic, and eat it. The race of Sagara (sorcerers) is much feared, as they are held to have strange power "but there is also an herb, a charm against such sorcerers. In tho mountains of the Druses there is yet another kind of magicians, Gessit, who draAv a circle round the bewitched person, out of which he cannot pass. Superstition, indeed, goes far, and Melek Saat has s 3