He was fifteen feet in length, and it required our united strength to tear off his skin, which shone with a variety of passing colours.

On losing his hide he tore away from the stakes; and although his head was shivered to atoms, and he had lost three feet of his length of neck by the ball having cut through this part, which separated in tearing off the skin, still he lashed out and writhed in frightful convulsions, which continued until I left him, bearing as my trophy his scaly hide.

These boas will kill deer, and by crushing them into a sort of sausage they are enabled by degrees to swallow them.
There are many of these reptiles in Ceylon; but they are seldom seen, as they generally wander forth at night.

There are marvellous stories of their size, and my men assured me that they had seen much larger than the snake now mentioned; to me he appeared a horrible monster.
I do not know anything so disgusting as a snake.

There is an instinctive feeling that the arch enemy is personified when these wretches glide by you, and the blood chills with horror.