The Last Ivory Hunter by Peter Hathaway Capstick

Author:Peter Hathaway Capstick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-04-18T16:00:00+00:00

This part of Wally’s ordeal reminds me of something I witnessed in the then British Honduras. I saw a man who had been bitten by the infamous fer-de-lance of Central America. Known locally as the barba amarilla, or “yellow beard,” it is also a viper with essentially hemotoxic venom. God save you the consequences if it nails you.

I wrote a magazine article some twenty years ago about this incident, in which the victim vomited black blood and was in agony until a “snake doctor” was found through some kind of jungle telegraph. I photographed the entire proceedings, which entailed a collection of stuff you would hardly think could cure snakebite, especially from a fer-de-lance. Named after its lance-shaped head and yellow throat, this deadly viper is also locally known as the “jumping tommygoff”—a breed of trouble you don’t need.

The snake doctor began by smearing very hot armadillo fat over the wound. There was no cutting or sucking of the wound at all. A poultice of tobacco leaves was bound over the bite and the man was fed a mixture of crushed peppercorns in warm water, which made him vomit up large quantities of more black blood.

He was back at work two days later, when most men would have been dead. Ask me not, brother, what that was all about or how it worked. I have no degree in herpetology or snakebite treatment, but work it did. I saw it with my own eyes. It appears to me, on a highly nonmedical basis, that hemotoxic viper bites seem to amalgamate the poison in the stomach. True? Damned if I know. I can just tell you that I was there.

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