I never killed him, because there were already enough of his kind dead on every side.

The very trees and grass died; and in this originated another almost equally terrible peril--the bush fires, of which more hereafter.

Talking about snakes, one day I had a narrow escape from one of these ungrateful reptiles.

A number of baby snakes had swarmed into the trough, and I was in the very act of angrily removing them when I heard a shout of horror from Yamba.

I swung round, instinctively leaping sideways as I did so, and there, rearing itself high in the air, was an enormous snake, fully twenty feet long.