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The Dragon: Malay

Unfortunately the exciting story of a serpent, between forty and fifty feet in length, which I extract from the North China Daily News of November 10th, 1880, the scene of which is also laid in the Malay peninsula, lacks the authenticity of the narrator's name. It is as follows :- "The Straits Times tells the following exciting python story: 'A sportsman, who a few days ago penetrated into the * Perak and the Malays, p. 77. jungle lying between Buddoh and Sirangoon, came upon a lone hut in a district called Campong Batta, upon the roof of which the skin of an enormous boa or python (whichever may be the correct name) was spread out. The hut was occupied by a Malay and his wife, from whom our informant gathered the following extraordinary account. One night, about a week previously, the Malay was awakened by the cries of his wife for assistance. Being in perfect darkness, and supposing the alarm to be on account of thieves, he seized his sharp parang, and groped his way to her sleeping place, where his hand fell upon a slimy reptile. It was fully a minute before he could comprehend the entire situation, and when he did, he discovered that the whole of his wife's arm had been drawn down the monster's throat, whither the upper part of her body was slowly but surely following. Not daring to attack the monster at once for fear of causing his wife's death, the husband, with great presence of mind, seized two bags within reach, and commenced stuffing them into the corner of the snake's jaws, by means of which he succeeded in forcing them wider open and releasing his wife's arm. No sooner had the boa lost his prey than he attacked the husband, whom he began encircling in his fatal coils; but holding out both arms, and watching his opportunity, he attacked the monster so vigorously with his parang that it suddenly unwound itself and vanished through an opening beneath the attap sides of the hut. His clothes were covered with blood, as was also the floor of the hut, and his wife's arm was blue with the squeezing it received between the boa's jaws. At daylight the husband discovered his patch of plaintain trees nearly ruined, where the boa, writhing in agony, had broken off the trees at the roots, and in the midst of the debris lay the monster itself, dead. The Malay assured our informant that he had received no less than sixty dollars from Chinese, who came from long distances to purchase pieces of the flesh on account of its supposed medical properties, and that he had refused six dollars for the skin, which he preferred to retain as a trophy. It was greatly decomposed, having been some days exposed in the open air, and useless for curing. There is no telling what may have been the measurement of this large reptile, but the skin, probably greatly stretched by unskilful removal, measured between seven and eight fathoms." Bontius speaks of serpents in the Asiatic Isles. "The great ones," he says, "sometimes exceed thirty-six feet; and have such capacity of throat and stomach that they swallow whole boars."