Wanderings in South America , page 9 by Charles Waterton
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the close of day the vampires leave the hollow trees, whither they had fled at the morning's dawn, and scour along the river's banks in quest of prey. On waking from sleep the astonished traveller finds his hammock all stained with blood. It is the vampire that hath sucked him. Not man alone, but every unprotected animal, is exposed to his depredations; and so gently does this nocturnal surgeon draw the blood that, instead of being roused, the patient is lulled into a still profounder sleep. There are two species of vampire in Demerara, and both suck living animals: one is rather larger than the common bat, the other measures above two feet from wing to wing extended.
Snakes are frequently met with in the woods betwixt the sea-coast and the rock Saba, chiefly near the creeks and on the banks of the river. They are large, beautiful and formidable. The rattlesnake seems partial to a tract of ground known by the name of Canal Number-three: there the effects of his poison will be long remembered.
The camoudi snake has been killed from thirty to forty feet long; though not venomous, his size renders him destructive to the passing animals. The Spaniards in the Oroonoque positively affirm that he grows to the length of seventy or eighty feet and that he will destroy the strongest and largest bull. His name seems to confirm this: there he is called "matatoro," which literally means "bull-killer." Thus he may be ranked amongst the deadly snakes, for it comes nearly to the same thing in the end whether the victim dies by poison from the fangs, which corrupts his blood and makes it stink horribly, or whether his body be crushed to mummy, and swallowed by this hideous beast.
The whipsnake of a beautiful changing green, and the coral, with alternate broad traverse bars of black and red, glide from bush to bush, and may be handled with safety; they are harmless little creatures.
The labarri snake is speckled, of a dirty brown colour, and can scarcely be distinguished from the ground or stump on whi