THE LAST SNAKE YARN.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1147, 3 February 1874, Page 3

THE LAST SNAKE YARN.

Heroic treatment has to be resorted to when snakes are in question. A youth, hired to a squatter in the Upper Uoulbourn for twelve months, wanted to leave, but his master wouldn't hear of it. The next day the poor lad was bitten by a snake. He went to the home station and showed the marks of the fangs in his legs, imploring them to send him at once to the hospital of the nearest town. The squatter was away, but the overseer got some men from •the woolshed, who held the patient down wile he excised the bitten part with a clasp knife, and applied a cautery in the shape of a flat iron iizzing hot from the tire. Every howl of the patient's was smothered in doses of brandy and ammonia, and he was half drunk when the operation was over. The squatter ti eu came in, looked at the leg, and declared that half enough hadn't been ci t away. He had him held again, and touk away a few more slices of flesh,, poured a tiblespoonful of gunpowder into the cavity, which he managed to explode with considerable difficulty by means of a red hot poker. By this time the lad had consumed nearly a bottle of brandy, and drowsily smiled at the worst ihey "could do. But he must he kept awake till the doctor, sent for fr m twenty miles at the first news of the accident had come. He was trotted up and down between two lusty shearers till he threatened to go fast asleep in their arms. The humane squatter, watching his symptoms, and dreading the fatal effects of sleep, had a rope put ronnd his waist, and with "oi.e, two, three, and away," he was slung head ovt heels into the icy cold water of the *»,-'. He came out wide awake and nearly sober, and every time sleep appeared in his eyelids the ducking was repeated. The doctor came some hours afterwards, and strange to say found him alive. Ho still lives, though rather tender about the calf, and tearfully declares he will never prick himself with a pin again to make people believe he was bitten by a snake. He was a very •ingenious youth, but he didn't get the discharge he thought.