Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 67
to kill a snake I have found among the native races
all the way across
strong as in the
South America, but nowhere so
roots of the Andes. A woman
must never kill a snake when she can get a man or
boy to do it for her. In some places
only be killed but buried. When among
it must not
the wild
Jibaro and Zaparo Indians in the Forest of Canelos,
I have sometimes had to kill two or three snakes
a day for the women. How is it that the woman
and the serpent are in mysterious relation in the
early traditions of many civilised nations, and in
the actual customs of savage nations even at the
present day ?
[It may be as well to continue here Spruce's
experience of the results of the bites and stings of
venomous insects, especially as they include one
during his residence at Tarapoto which had results
as bad as those of his Indian host above described.]
After snakes, the venomous animals most to be
dreaded are the large hairy spiders, especially the
species of Mygale, of whose bird-hunting propensities
Mr. Bates and others have told us. I never
saw a case of their sting, and all I ever heard of
proved fatal except one, and that was of a woman
at San Carlos, who was bitten in the heel and im-
mediately dropped, with a shriek, as if shot,
lay at the point of death for ten days, but finally
recovered. I have been bitten by spiders, but
never seriously. At Tarapoto a smallish green
spider abounded in the bushes, and would
times be lurking among my fresh specimens
bit furiously when molested, with an effect al>
equal to the sting of a bee. At the
cockroaches were a great pest in the