Myths and Legends of Our Own Land — Volume 09 : as to buried treasure by Charles M. (Charles Montgomery) Skinner
page 25 of 53 (47%)
page 25 of 53 (47%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
Sysladobosis Lake, in Maine, has a snake with a head like a dog's, but it
is hardly worth mentioning because it is only eight feet long-hardly longer than the name of the lake. More enterprise is shown across the border, for Skiff Lake, New Brunswick, has a similar snake thirty feet long. In Cotton Mather's time a double-headed snake was found at Newbury, Massachusetts,--it had a head at each end,--and before it was killed it showed its evil disposition by chasing and striking at the lad who first met it. A snake haunts Wolf Pond, Pennsylvania, that is an alleged relic of the Silurian age. It was last seen in September, 1887, when it unrolled thirty feet of itself before the eyes of an alarmed spectator--again a fisherman. The beholder struck him with a pole, and in revenge the serpent capsized his boat; but he forbore to eat his enemy, and, diving to the bottom, disappeared. The creature had a black body, about six inches thick, ringed with dingy-yellow bands, and a mottled-green head, long and pointed, like a pike's. Silver Lake, near Gainesville, New York, was in 1855 reported to be the lair of a great serpent, and old settlers declare that he still comes to the surface now and then. A tradition among the poor whites of the South Jruns to the effect that the sea-monster that swallowed Jonah--not a whale, because the throat of that animal is hardly large enough to admit a herring--crossed the Atlantic and brought up at the Carolinas. His passenger was supplied with tobacco and beguiled the tedium of the voyage by smoking a pipe. The monster, being unused to that sort of thing, suffered as all beginners in |
|