120 SNAKE-STONES book ii
keep ; and the third was sold to me for 300 ecus, and I made a present of it to a friend.
I shall finally make mention of the snake-stone, which is nearly of the size of a double,1
some of them tending to an oval shape, being thick in the middle and
becoming thin towards the edges. The Indians say that it grows on the
heads of certain snakes, but I should rather believe that it is the
priests of the idolaters who make them think so, and that this stone is
a composition which is made of certain drugs.2 Whatever it
may be, it has an excellent virtue in extracting all the poison when
one has been bitten by a poisonous reptile. If the part bitten is not
punctured it is necessary to make an incision so that the blood may
flow ; and when the stone has been applied to it, it does not fall off
till it has extracted all the venom which is drawn to it. In order to
clean it it is steeped in woman's milk, or, in default of it, in that
of a cow ; and after having been steeped for ten or twelve hours, the
milk, which has absorbed all the venom, assumes the colour of matter.
One day, when I dined with the Archbishop of Goa, he took me into his
museum, where he had many curiosities. Among other things he showed me
one of these stones, and in telling me of its properties assured me
that but three days since he had made trial of it, and then he
presented it to me. As he traversed a marsh on the island of Salsette,
upon which Goa is situated, on his way to a house in the country, one
of his pallankeen bearers, who was almost naked, was bitten by a
serpent and was at once cured by this stone. I have bought many of them
; it is only the Brahmans who sell them, and it is that which makes me
think that they make them. You employ
1 Doubloon ? A Spanish gold coin, formerly worth 33s. or 36a., now £1.
2 Thevenot says that they were made of the ashes of the root of a certain plant, mixed with a particular kind of clay (Voyages, p. 94). Some snake-stones appear to have been made of charred bone. (See for an exhaustive account of this subject Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 847; Tennent, Ceylon, i. 197 ; Fryer, 138 f. ; Voyage of F. Leguat, ii.
234.) The belief in their efficacy is still very general in India ; by
some they are supposed to be found in the head of the adjutant bird
(see Ball, Jungle Life in India, 82; Prof. \V. R. Hallidav, Folk-lore, xxxii. 262 ff., xxxiii, 118 f.).
