"Rattlesnake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two flags floating from an improvised flagstaff on top of the court-house. One was the flag of the State, with its pillars, its sentinel, and its legend of "Wisdom, Justice, and Moderation." The design of the other was entirely new to Little Compton. It was a pine tree on a field of white, with a rattlesnake coiled at its roots, and the inscription, "DON'T TREAD ON ME!" A few hours later Uncle Abner Lazenberry made his appearance in front of Compton's store. He had just hitched his horse to the ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... a gray cloud purples with the sunrise. This rock was tossed lightly on edge when the earth was young, and stands vertical. To get the flowers you climb the mountain to one side, and, balancing on the rock's thin edge, slip down by roots and past rattlesnake dens till you hang out over the water and reach for them. To avoid snakes it is best to go when ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... so absolutely graceful as a rattlesnake, and none more gentle in intention. It is only against imposition that he protests. Our forefathers had learned a not unworthy lesson from their contact with nature in the New World when they put upon the first flag of the colonies a rattlesnake, with the Latin legend, Nemo me impune lacessit—"No ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... warriors sat; or in front of the broad dais were great images of the full and the half moon, colored white or black; or rudely carved and painted figures of the panther, and of men with buffalo horns. The tribes held in reverence both the panther and the rattlesnake. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... being led into the open starlight; fifteen, and they were away at a lunging bronco lope, a twisting column of twos along the sandy road, leaving the garrison to wake and wonder. Three, four, five miles they sped, past Boulder Point, past Rattlesnake Hill, and still no sign of anything amiss, no symptom of night-raiding Apache, for indeed the Apache dreads the dark. Thrice the sergeant had sprung from his horse, lighted a match, and studied the trail. On ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... sun to set, we took a short stroll over to the adobe ruins. Inside the enclosure lay an enormous rattlesnake, coiled. It was the first one I had ever seen except in a cage, and I was fascinated by the horror of the round, grayish-looking heap, so near the color of the sand on which it lay. Some soldiers came and killed it. But I noticed ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... "You know something about rattlesnake bites, I believe?" Rutter went on hurriedly, as Tom Reade slipped to the ground. "The boy has been bitten by one and we'll ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... growled with an injured air one afternoon when a fortnight had passed without any noticeable change in the atmosphere. "Wish I hadn't come back that night. Guess they'd have sung a different tune then! Maybe a coyote would have got me, or I'd have stepped into a rattlesnake's nest and been stung to death. Bet they'd have felt sorry when they found me—," he hesitated. His picture was too vivid, and he shuddered as he thought what a fate would have been his had a rattlesnake bitten him as he tramped ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... receive a naval commission after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He was, too, the first man to break the American naval flag from the mast. This was not, however, the Stars and Stripes, but a yellow flag with a pine tree and a rattlesnake, and the words, "Tread on me ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... mades met together in the village milliner shop, where the Sore-eye-siss society held meetin's once a week, and their false teeth trembled like a rattlesnake's tail, when they read ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... rest of your life? Sirrah, I will ruin and annihilate you!"—and "tossed me about the room with his fist on my throat," says Hirsch; "offering to have pity nevertheless, if I would take back the Jewels, and return all writings." [Narrative (in—Tantale—).] Eyes glancing like a rattlesnake's, as we perceive; and such a phenomenon as Hirsch had not expected, this Christmas! In short, the matter has here fairly exploded, and is blazing aloft, as a mass of intricate fuliginous ruin, not to be deciphered henceforth. Such a scene for Chasot on the Christmas-day ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... biting you, dies of spite—the cencoatl, which has five feet, and shines in the dark; so that fortunately a warning is given of the vicinity of these animals in different ways; in some by the odour they exhale, in some by the light they emit, and in others, like the rattlesnake, by the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... conceded the application of the Wilmot Proviso; in 1856 we were compelled to concede the principle of the Wilmot Proviso. In 1850 we had no fears that slaves would enter New Mexico; in 1861 we were threatened with a view of the flag of the rattlesnake floating over Faneuil Hall. If any principle has been established by events, with the certainty of mathematical demonstration, it is this, that concession to the Slave Power is the suicide of Freedom. We are purchasing this fact at the expense of arming five hundred ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... horse before four large holes and pointed at them with his riding-whip. "Gopher in that one," he declared without hesitation. "Mr. Gopher is away from the next one, out getting his dinner likely; a coon lives in the next, but he is away from home. Rattlesnake, and a big one, lives in the fourth, but he is also away from home, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... bow-strings all the small ground animals, including the prairie-dog. We both snared and shot them. Once a little boy set a snare for one, and lay flat on the ground a little way from the hole, holding the end of the string. Presently he felt something move and pulled in a huge rattlesnake; and to this day, his name is "Caught-the-Rattlesnake." Very often a boy got a new name in some such manner. At another time, we were playing in the woods and found a fawn's track. We followed and caught it while asleep; but in the ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... dismounted and rusted, lay half buried in ashes, a sudden whir-r-r caused him to spring back as though he had received an electric shock. Only his quickness saved him from the living death held in the fangs of a rattlesnake that had evidently just crawled from the black muzzle of the gun. The snake instantly re-coiled to repeat its venomous stroke, and though Donald could easily have killed it as he had scores of its kind, the presence of this hideous and sole representative ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... caption, a typical Banneker eye-catcher, "The Rattlesnake Dies Out; But the Pen-Viper is Still With Us." "I don't care to indulge myself with your literary efforts at present, Mr. Banneker," he said languidly. "Is this the answer ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... companions in the rear to pause suddenly and look down. His fellows intent on their conversation, were several minutes coming up; but when they did so they witnessed a veritable case of fascination—for the young man was looking intently into the eyes of a large rattlesnake, coiled at his feet; nor could the voices of all his friends arouse him. Being jerked back with some violence, he instantly recovered his senses, but seemed to be puzzled to recall the circumstances connected with his first ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... the San Gregorio," he cried passionately. "I love every rock and cactus and rattlesnake in it. Valgame Dios!" And the maimed right hand twisted and clutched as, subconsciously, he strove to clench his fist. "Ah, who was the coward—who was the traitor that betrayed us ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... reasons for admitting Texas as a slave State, the old man called on Calhoun, and showed him the industriously collected proofs of the falsity of this census. He says: 'He writhed like a trodden rattlesnake, but said the census was full of mistakes; but one part balanced another,—it was not worth while to correct them.' His whole life was an incessant warfare with the rapidly advancing spirit of slavery, that was coiling like a serpent ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... thought he saw a Rattlesnake That questioned him in Greek: He looked again, and found it was The Middle of Next Week. "The one thing I regret," he said, ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... recognized as manifestations of mental states—not vice versa, as has been ignorantly believed for ages. A prominent physician told me the other day that many a condition of nervous prostration now could be directly traced to selfishness. We know that hatred and anger produce fatal poisons. The rattlesnake is a splendid example of that. I am told that its poison and the white of an egg are formed of exactly the same amounts of the same elements. The difference in effect is the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... "And step upon a rattlesnake." finished Tom. "Better keep your eyes open, Songbird, or the rattlers will be after you. They love music and ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... die for his crime, and the law would hold his slayer guiltless, there would be a deal less sin and misery in this world. As for me, Hannah, I feel it to be my solemn duty to Nora, to womankind, and to the world, to seek out the wretch as wronged her and kill him where I find him, just as I would a rattlesnake as had bit ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... that it was so. Whenever any of the Happy Family found anything in the hills that was nice, they always thought of Buck, and they always brought it to him. You would be amazed at the number of rattlesnake rattles, and eagle's claws, and elk teeth, and things like that, which the Kid possessed and kept carefully stowed away in a closet ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... to find this generous bloomer in pine woodlands, dry thickets, and sandy soil. Purplish-veined oval leaves, more or less hairy, that spread in a tuft next the ground, are probably as efficacious in curing shake bites as those of the Rattlesnake Plantain. When a credulous generation believed that the Creator had indicated with some sign on each plant the special use for which each was intended, many leaves were found to have veinings suggesting the marks on a snake's body; therefore, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... nay, more—I actually believed it. I remembered that I had been struck with a peculiarity about the reptile— its weird look—the superior cunning exhibited in its mode of escape— and not less peculiar the fact of its having stung me unprovoked—a rare thing for the rattlesnake to do! All these points rushing simultaneously into my mind, produced the conviction that for the fatal wound on my wrist I was indebted, not to chance, but ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... hear the noise of their rattles sometimes when the sun is sinking behind the swamp. (The deadly rattle of the rattlesnake is heard) There! ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... January, 1776, Esek Hopkins, commander in chief, stepped on board of one of them and took command. As he did so, Lieutenant John Paul Jones hoisted a yellow silk flag on which was the device of a pine tree and a coiled rattlesnake and the motto "Don't tread on me." This was the first flag ever displayed on an American man-of-war. Ice delayed the departure of the squadron; but in February it put to sea, went to the Bahama Islands, captured the forts on the island of New Providence, and carried off a quantity ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... him and welcome, if that is the best thing for society; hate him, in a certain sense, as you hate a rattlesnake, but, if you pretend to be a philosopher, recognize the fact that what you hate in him is chiefly misfortune, and that if you had been born with his villanous low forehead and poisoned instincts, and bred among creatures ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... manner of flavours, and able to eat caviar or liquid Camembert, would have found the cloudy brown liquor virulently repulsive. It contained in solution, with other things, the vital element of surprise, for it was comparatively odourless, and, unlike the chivalrous rattlesnake, gave no warning of what it was about to do. In the case of Penrod, the surprise was complete and its ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... met with in the woods betwixt the sea-coast and the rock Saba, chiefly near the creeks and on the banks of the river. They are large, beautiful and formidable. The rattlesnake seems partial to a tract of ground known by the name of Canal Number-three: there the effects of his poison will be ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... west, in a wide curve, roughly resembling a half moon. Toward the east, perhaps twenty-five miles from where Conniston sat upon his horse, the distant mountains sent out two far-reaching spurs of pine-clad ridges between which lay Rattlesnake Valley. Due south, as Lonesome Pete's outstretched finger indicated, lay the road which they were to follow and the headquarters of the Half Moon. There again a thickly timbered spur of the mountains ran down into the plain on each side ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... takka (sandals woven of coco-nut fibre), stepped lightly and swiftly on before me; I with my heavy boots crushing into the brittle, delicate, and sponge-like coral, startling from their sunbaths hundreds of black and orange-banded sea-snakes—reptiles whose bite is as deadly as that of a rattlesnake, but which hastened out of our way almost as soon as they heard our footsteps. Here and there we had to turn aside to avoid deep pools, some of which, though not more than ten fathoms in width, were as blue as the ocean beyond, their rocky ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... bravery by the way in which he speaks of them in his accounts of outdoor life. He says to a man wearing alligator boots there is little danger, for the fang of the reptile cannot go through the leather, and the snake rarely strikes as high as one's knee. But he had at least one experience with a rattlesnake not ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... Qualities: alterative, diuretic, antiseptic. For scrofulous and cutaneous affections. It has also the property of destroying living microscopical matter in or on the human body. The Negro Casta, who discovered this herb, afterwards, as a remedy against the deadly bite of the rattlesnake, received a considerable reward from the Assembly of South Carolina. It is a native of most parts of Europe and Asia, as also of Japan. Plantain stands in the forefront of ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope
... turkey's 'gobble' had broken my sleep. Then I climb'd some tall maize plants, and ate up the ears, And enjoy'd the repast, notwithstanding my fears; For great is my awe of the red Indian's gun, And I thought I had caught a slight glimpse of one. I saw, too, a rattlesnake creeping hard by, And heard his tail clatter, and mark'd his red eye. He coil'd himself up, for he spied me right soon, And was wishing, no doubt, for a bit of raccoon; Then, thinking the risk of a rifle in truth, Was better by far than his poisonous tooth, I hasten'd away from the much dreaded ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... over to me to look after. She's shy that way. Yes, sir, any time I git bit up by man or beast, or shot up or knifed, I'll take Rabbit ahead of any doctor you can find. Them Indians they know the secrets of it. I wouldn't be afraid to stand and let a rattlesnake bite me till it fainted if Rabbit was around. She can ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... on the table, his face a map of appalling fury and hate. "Let him go to it, then. I've been a cripple seventeen years because Beaudry shot me up. By God! I'll gun his son inside of twenty-four hours. I'll stomp him off'n the map like he was a rattlesnake." ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... with it a ledge of the rocks among which he is clambering, unknowing of the serpent's dens. With clenched teeth, and hair that rustled like the sedge-grass, I rose and woke up the obedient gas, which flashed tremulously on the scales of an enormous rattlesnake coiled round the mice's cage, tightening his folds as he whizzed his infernal warning, and darting out his lightning tongue with baffled fury at the trembling group in the middle of the cage. This I saw by the first flash. Grasping a sword from among ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... anythin'—not from now on. But while we're on the subject and to avoid any future misunderstandin' I might just as well tell you right now that I can't see nothin' good in a sheepman—nothin'! I'm like my cat Tom when he sees a rattlesnake, my hair bushes up clean over my ears and I see hell, damnation, ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... ses the capt'in, 'I relies on you, Joe.'—'E always did—and would you believe it, I upped an' 'ooked that there great rattlesnake out of the boiler with ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... Mrs. Dalrymple. Hints, at first dimly shadowed, that Matilda was not in spirits this morning; that Fanny, poor child, had a headache,—directed especially at the culprit in question,—grew gradually into those little motherly fondnesses in mamma, that, like the fascination of the rattlesnake, only lure on to ruin. The doomed man was pressed to dinner when all others were permitted to take their leave; he was treated like one of the family, God help him! After dinner, the major would keep him an hour over his wine, discussing the misery of an ill-assorted marriage; ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... fall," he said to himself, with a sudden shiver of delight, "I honestly believe it would fill in that hole, so that not even a rattlesnake could crawl out. Oh! if those men are in there, as I hope, and I could start that cap-stone rolling, wouldn't they be shut up as snug as if they were in a bottle, with the ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... cl'ar down to the toe nails," said Solomon. "They couldn't stan' it here. A lightnin' thrower is a few too many. They'd ruther be nigh a rattlesnake." ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... alone, let him alone, men," said Jack Chase. "Only keep off the tail of a rattlesnake, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... gazed sharply at him, as if trying to detect a covert sneer—it would have been safer to have stroked a rattlesnake's crest than to have trifled with Livingstone just then—but Willis's face was as innocent of any expression as ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... welcome.") He played no instrument; as a young man, however, he used to sing a little, but his voice, though true, was never strong. But he had small leisure to devote to art. On his holidays he would sometimes sketch with a firm and rapid touch. His illustrations to the "Cruise of the Rattlesnake" show what his untrained capacities were. But to go to a concert or opera was rare after middle life; to go to the theatre rarer still, much as he appreciated a good play. His time was too deeply mortgaged; and in later life, the deafness ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... by the young braves bearing bows and arrows and buffalo-skin shields on which were drawn figures portraying victories. Their hair was turned up in a stiff crest surmounted by eagle feathers, and their bodies were painted bright vermilion. Behind came the elders, with medicine-bags of rattlesnake skin streaming from their shoulders and long strings of bears' claws hanging from neck and wrist. They were dressed in buckskin, garnished with porcupine quills, and wore moccasins of buffalo hide, ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... butterfly. Miz. Prairie-Dog ain't find no fliers what wants to live un'neath de ground. But crawlers—bugs an' worms an' sich-like—dey mostly does live un'neath de ground, anyhow, an' de fust pusson what come seekin' house-room with Miz. Prairie-Dog was Brother Rattlesnake. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... as the season progressed, coastwise operations in this quarter became increasingly hazardous for both parties. On October 22, Hull wrote that neither the "Enterprise" nor the "Rattlesnake" could cruise much longer. The enemy still maintained his grip, in virtue of greater size and numbers. Ten days later comes the report of a convoy, with one of the brigs, driven into port by a frigate; that the enemy appear almost every day, and never without a ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... public in next week's illustrated paper. The feathered end of his shaft titillates harmlessly enough, but too often the arrowhead is crusted with a poison worse than the Indian gets by mingling the wolf's gall with the rattlesnake's venom. No man is safe whose unguarded threshold the mischief-making questioner has crossed. The more unsuspecting, the more frank, the more courageous, the more social is the subject of his vivisection, the more easily does he get ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... will regale the traveller with most acceptable stories about the Prairie-dog, Rattlesnake, and the Burrowing Owl, all living in the same den on a basis of brotherly love and Christian charity; having effected, it would seem, a limited partnership and a most satisfactory division of labour: the Prairie-dog is to dig the hole, the Owl to mount sentry and give warning ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of Turin, punctured an animal with the tooth of a rattlesnake. The head of this serpent had lain in a dry state for sixteen years exposed to the air and dust, and, moreover, had previously been preserved more than thirty years in spirits of wine. To his great astonishment an hour afterward the animal died. So habits, good or bad, that have been lost sight ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... firmly. "When I want to follow up Cleopatra's fashion, and commit suicide, I am goin' to hire a rattlesnake, and take my poison as she ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... privilege of meeting her unprepossessing brother-in-law; nor had she dreamed what peril she was preparing for Davidge in planning to secure for him and his shipyard the services of this same Jake, as lazy and as amiable as any side-winder rattlesnake that ever basked in ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... "Now, Misteh Rattlesnake, yo' jes min' yo' own business. Nobody's goin' step on yo', ner go triflin' roun' yo' in no way whatsomeveh. Yo' jes lay there in the sun an' git 's fat 's yo' please. Don' yo' tu'n yo' weeked li'l' eyes on Gideon. He's jes ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... the mark, either. A rattlesnake rattles before he strikes. I say mean people are more like the copperhead, that hides in the grass and leaves that are like its own color, and when you ain't expectin' it and without any warnin', he'll up and strike you with his poison ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... the West was warned to look out for rattlesnakes. He was assured, however, that a snake would never strike until after sounding the rattles. One day, while seated on a log, eating his lunch, the Italian saw a rattlesnake coiled ready to strike. He lifted his legs carefully, with the intention of darting away on the other side of the log the moment the rattles should sound their warning. But just as his feet cleared the top of the log, the snake struck out and its ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... themselves, head and ears, in the marshes on the other side, where they all miserably perished to a man; and their bones being collected and decently covered by the Tammany Society of that day, formed that singular mound called Rattlesnake Hill, which rises out of the center of the salt marshes a little to the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... the animals in this region were very tame, for they had not learned to fear men. Yet among them the explorers found some dangerous enemies. One was the grizzly bear, and another the rattlesnake. But the greatest scourges of all were the tiny, buzzing mosquitoes, which beset ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... of the employment of these killing substances, but he did not use them. In his tribe they made a poison by teasing a rattlesnake and having it strike a piece of deer's liver. This was later buried in the ground until it rotted, and the arrow points were smeared with this revolting material. It was a combination of crotalin venom and ptomaine ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... January, 1776, a fleet of eight vessels set sail. As they were about to weigh anchor, John Paul Jones, a lieutenant on the flagship, flung to the breeze a yellow silk flag on which were a pine tree and a coiled rattlesnake, with this motto: "Don't tread on me." This was the first flag ever hoisted on ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... upon the Llano Estacado, although the prong-horn antelope—true denizen of the desert—is there found, as also its enemy, the Mexican jackal, or coyote. To the rattlesnake and horned lizard (agama) it is a congenial home; and the singular snake-bird (paisano) may frequently be seen running over the arid waste, or skulking through the tortuous stems of the nopals. In the canons of the stream the grizzly bear makes his haunt, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... one aspect of it. A striking instance of this has been developed by Dr. Harrison Allen, in the prevalence of what he calls the "crotalean curve," in aboriginal American art, a line which is the radical of the profile view of the head of the rattlesnake (crotalus).[208-1] This he has detected in the architectural monuments of Mexico and Yucatan, in the Maya phonetic scrip, and even in the rude efforts of the savage tribes. Each of these elective methods of representing the serpent, would itself, by independent ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... this treatise, regard the snake symbol with reverence; the Moqui Indians have their sacred snake dance, in which they worship the reptiles, handling the most vicious and poisonous rattlesnakes with seeming impunity; the Apaches hold that every rattlesnake is an emissary of the devil;[49] "the Piutes of Nevada have a demon deity in the form of a serpent still supposed to exist in the waters of Pyramid Lake;"[50] on the wall of an ancient Aztec ruin ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... formidable length and appearance often get the better of the philosophy of some people, particularly of Europeans. The most dangerous one is the pilot, or copperhead; for the poison of which no remedy has yet been discovered. It bears the first name because it always precedes the rattlesnake; that is, quits its state of torpidity in the spring a week before the other. It bears the second name on account of its head being adorned with many copper-coloured spots. It lurks in rocks near the water, and is extremely active and dangerous. Let man ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... Jim and George Girty, his brothers, are p'isin rattlesnake Injuns. Simon Girty's bad enough; but Jim's the wust. He's now wusser'n a full-blooded Delaware. He's all the time on the lookout to capture white wimen to take to his Injun teepee. Simon Girty and his pals, McKee and Elliott, ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... he had got into a nest, so to speak, of evil spirits. Before he had been two days with them, he would have given all he possessed, or ever hoped to possess, in order to escape from the "Rattlesnake," which ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... must not complain, but look forward to a good result. Still, in travelling through this country, I could not but be struck with the force of a symbol. Wherever the hog comes, the rattlesnake disappears; the omnivorous traveller, safe in its stupidity, willingly and easily makes a meal of the most dangerous of reptiles, and one which the Indian looks on with a mystic awe. Even so the white settler pursues the ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the snake lay dead upon the water. He slipped the end of the pole under it and slung it ashore. "There! how do you like that?" said he, and he headed the boat upstream again. It was a "copper-bellied moccasin," he declared, whatever that may be, and was worse than a rattlesnake. ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... catch me drilling off down Plum Bun at night, moon or no moon. There's a rattlesnake or copperhead for every hundred yards!" It was Frank who took up Jerry's thought. "Besides, it would be different if we hadn't waited so long. Tod—Tod's—he's dead now," voicing at last the feeling they had never before put ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... dis town. Why, when I was a li'l' gal, about so high, I was walkin' along Canal Street one day, barefeeted, an' not lookin' down, an' terrectly I feel some'h'n' nip me 'snip!' in de big toe, an' lookin' quick I see a grea' big rattlesnake—" ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... Good was sought out in 1678 to cure a head sore and another "doctress" impressed the Reverend John Clayton, who had some insights into medical science himself, with her ability to cure the bite of a rattlesnake by using the drug dittany. In the same year that Good's wife was sought to treat the head sore, a Mrs. Grendon dispensed medicine to an individual who had injured his eyes in a fight. The exact status of these women, however, is unknown; it is highly unlikely that ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... he could be, couldn't be any worse to be alive. He was about fifty years of age, when I left him, a right red-looking man, big bellied old fellow, weighs about two hundred and forty pounds. He drinks hard, he is just like a rattlesnake, just as cross and crabbed when he speaks, seems like he could go through you. He flogged Richmond for not ploughing the corn good, that was what he pretended to whip him for. Richmond ran away, was away four months, as nigh as I can guess, then they cotched him, then ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... wave a red flag, or even the darker red of anarchy, but what always sobers me is the thought that if I had the good luck to inherit or make even a reasonable fortune I'd have no more use for socialism than for a rattlesnake in my bed. Why are ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... snakes. Lithely the blacksnake uncoils in his sight. Voluminously the bloated boa convolves before him. All horrent the cobra exalts his hooded head, and the spanning jaws fly open. Quivers and chitters the tail of the cheerful rattlesnake; silently slips out the forked tongue, and is as silently absorbed. The fangless adder warps up the leg of the Professor, lays clammy coils about his neck, and pokes a flattened head curiously into his open mouth. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... forest path in single file, their burdens on their heads, and when the leaders saw the white men they stopped dead. A great chattering broke out. One could hear it going back all along the unseen line, a rattlesnake of sound. Then Felix called out to them; the gun-bearers and the white men stood aside, and the cassava bearers, taking ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... this fantastic method of declaring war on him? In that case he could certainly afford to ignore the letter as coming from a source unworthy of serious consideration. A worth-while enemy does not give a warning; he strikes. The cheapest thing about a rattlesnake is its rattle. Varr started to run over a list of recognized foemen who might have done this ill-natured deed, but presently desisted; their name ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... were seen the bush-master (cona-couchi) unrivalled for its brilliant colours, and the deadly nature of its poison; and the labari equally poisonous, which erects its scales in a frightful manner when irritated. The rattlesnake was also to be met with, and harmless tree snakes of many species. Under the river's bank lay enormous caymen or alligators,—one lately killed measured twenty-two feet. Wild deer and the peccari hog were seen in the glades in the centre of the island; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... lying beside the platform and began to poke around beneath it. As he reached forward to push the stake underneath, something struck like a flash at the back of his hand, and at the same moment a large rattlesnake uncoiled and slid from underneath the boards out into the short grass. With a blow of the stake the Indian broke the snake's back and then began to suck the two punctures on his knuckle, at the same time keeping the hand tightly closed and the skin ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... he flung a hastily-snatched rock at a rattlesnake that had begun its dry, chirring defiance on top of what once had been ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the commissary supplied was no easy problem in the new settlement. Sometimes they ate boiled rattlesnake in default of anything better. On one occasion, while the little band of settlers was assembled in prayer in one of the log cabins, someone espied a bear swimming across the Cuyahoga River. The coming of the bear was looked upon as providential, and the congregation suspended the prayer-meeting, ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... on a rattlesnake, he could not have been more horribly, more miserably stung. He had the sense of being poisoned, as though actual venom were coursing through his blood. There was one swift backward movement of his mind over ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... Wilson is the agent of the New York owner of a tract of some thirteen thousand acres of forest, including the greater portion of Mount Mitchell, a wilderness well stocked with bears and deer, and full of streams abounding in trout. It is also the playground of the rattlesnake. With all these attractions Big Tom's life is made lively in watching game poachers, and endeavoring to keep out the foraging cattle of the few neighbors. It is not that the cattle do much injury in the forest, but the looking after them is made ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... thoroughly. That is why I undertake to warn you. The rattlesnake which you dread is less terrible to me than the Iroquois. My duty, not my inclination, makes me ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... the name of Beaver, and his three sons, all of whom were hard "pets," who had often laughed to scorn the advice and entreaties of a pious, though very eccentric, minister, who resided in the same town. It happened one of the boys was bitten by a rattlesnake, and was expected to die, when the minister was sent for in great haste. On his arrival, he found the young man very penitent, and anxious to be prayed with. The minister calling on the family, knelt down, and prayed in this wise:—"O Lord! we thank thee for rattlesnakes. We thank ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... the summit of a mountain, and accessible only at one point. The battle lasted three hours, the Indians being finally driven off with the loss of sixty men. It was reported in San Jose that the Indians had surprised a company of seventy-two men, on Rattlesnake Creek, and murdered them all. In consequence of these occurrences, the Governor dispatched Col. Johnson to the scene of disturbance, ordered out 200 men, and applied to Gen. Smith for the assistance of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... her wonderful tales of what he had seen and done and been through, and of his daily adventures, and brought to her the occasional results of his single-handed combats with birds and beasts. He offered to dig up a tarantula's nest for her and to catch and tame for her pleasure a side-winder rattlesnake, or, if she preferred, a golden oriole or a mocking-bird. It did n't make any difference to him whether she chose a rattlesnake or an oriole; whatever she wanted him to do, he was ready to attempt. And Madge looked ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... They made it so unpleasant that he quit the service—crowded him out, that's all. He was a born soldier, too, and didn't know nothing else nor care for nothing else; as fine a man as I ever served under, but it soured him so that a rattlesnake couldn't have lived with him. He tried to go into some kind of business after he quit the army, but he wasn't cut out for it, and never made good as long as I knew of him. The last time I seen him was down on the border, and he had sure grown cultus. He had ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... famous as a bon vivant and gourmet. Indeed, even yet, in turning old pages we come upon records of his dinners. Bartram, the Philadelphia botanist, whom the Muscogee Indians quaintly called Puc-Puggy (the Flower Hunter) details the great size of a rattlesnake, "six feet long and as thick as the leg of an ordinary man" which he chanced to kill in his bosky researches near Fort Picolata in Florida, and not the least surprising feature of the incident was a message from the commandant inviting ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Sagamore said so innocently had two meanings. He might have meant that the cawing of the crows indicated that they were objecting to a rattlesnake sunning on some rock. Also he might have meant to say that their short, querulous cawing betrayed the presence of ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Constitution. Arriving in the United States, he purchased an estate not far from New York and built himself a handsome mansion, but a year later retribution came from an unlooked-for quarter, for he was bitten by a rattlesnake and died in the most horrible agonies ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... has not heard of the rattlesnake or copperhead? An unexpected sight of either of these reptiles will make even the lords of creation recoil; but there is a species of worm, found in various parts of this country, which conveys a poison of a nature so deadly that, compared with it, even the venom of the rattlesnake is ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... hissing in the chasm. He hastened with all speed to escape from so frightful a neighbourhood. His imagination was full of this new horror; he saw an adder in every curling vine, and heard the tail of a rattlesnake in every dry ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... After the head man had been dinning his instructions into him for some time, he said he might go, until his attendance was required. But Andy moved not; he stood with his eyes fixed by a sort of fascination on some object that seemed to rivet them with the same unaccountable influence which the rattlesnake exercises ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... an extensive view of the south-eastern portion of the Louisiade Archipelago. On the extreme right is the large South-east Island, with its sharply undulating outline, and Mount Rattlesnake clearly visible, although distant 45 miles. Next, after a gap partially filled up by Pig Island, Joannet Island succeeds, 10 1/2 miles in length, not so high as South-east Island but resembling it in dimness of outline—its highest point, Mount ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... faithful slave in all the Southland than old Uncle Snake-bit Bob. He had been bitten by a rattlesnake when he was a baby, and the limb had to be amputated, and its place was supplied with a wooden peg. There were three or four other "Bobs" on the plantation, and he was called Snake-bit to distinguish him. Though lame, and sick a good deal of his time, his life had not ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... little Prairie-Dog, who is a rather short-legged gray squirrel, with a funny little yelp and a troglodyte habitation, lives in villages or cities of from five hundred to five thousand dens, each (or most of them) tenanted in common with him by a harmless little Owl and a Rattlesnake of questionable amiability. The Owl sits by the mouth of the hole till driven away by your approach, when he follows his confrere's example by diving; the Rattlesnake stays usually below, to give any prowling, thieving prairie-wolf, or other carnivorous intruder, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in which we swung our hands over our heads, jumped about three feet, and let out a whoop. This was the "stunt" that he started out there in the country, where we were by ourselves. Automatically, without thinking, I swung my arms and leaped with him and yelled. Only later did I notice the rattlesnake over which I had jumped. I had not seen that I was about to walk right into it, and he had noticed it too late to explain. A flash of genius suggested ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... puts on the rattles." Mr. Bearfoot writes, "Ohstawensera seems to have been a general name for anything denuded of flesh, but is now confined to the rattles of the rattlesnake." ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... sez she, 'en put it in a bottle er a tin box, en bury it deep unner de root er a live-oak tree, en ez long ez it stays dere safe en soun', dey ain' no p'isen kin p'isen you, dey ain' no rattlesnake kin bite you, dey ain' no sco'pion kin sting you. Dis yere cunjuh man mought do one thing er 'nudder ter you, but he can't kill you. So you neenter be at all skeered, but go 'long 'bout yo' bizness ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... patchwork and feathers, bend backwards and forwards with the motion of the works, apparently to salute the spectators, and present to the idea persons dancing; while every passing of the shuttle produces a noise which may be assimilated to that of the Rattlesnake, accompanied with sounds something like those of a dancing-master beating time to his scholars. 272 his stock. At this moment, besides what we have just seen, there is one in Gracechurch Street, and another in Shoreditch, where the passengers are constantly assailed by a little boy, who ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... not distant, startled them. He crouched, wary as a rattlesnake about to strike. The rifle seemed almost to ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... Mary held out her arms as wide as she could—"came out of a tuft of grass. His tongue was like a scarlet thread, and had two sharp points; and, do you know, he raised his wicked head, and hissed at me; I was so frightened that I ran away. I think, Mrs. Frazer, it must have been a rattlesnake. Only feel now how my heart beats" —and the little girl took her nurse's hand, and laid it on ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... torpedo boat [he continues] was a rattlesnake to me, that I feared would get in his work while I was fighting the tiger; but I felt that the chances were that Cervera was bound to the West Indies, and so that the need of the Oregon there was so great that the risk of his turning south to meet me ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... answered in the negative, he replied, "Then I am safe." Now, it is not agreeable to be constantly on the watch-tower looking out for the foe, or to have to tread cautiously among the grass lest you should be bitten by a rattlesnake. But a man may imagine himself to be secure when he is not. Many of the shareholders and trustees involved in the late Bank catastrophy thought they were secure; but they slept upon a slumbering volcano, and many lost their all. They thought that they were secure, but it was a ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... can believe what these magazine fellers write," went on the engineer, pensively, "the girl of to-day is a sort of mixture of bronc, ostrich, and rattlesnake thrown in. Smokes, drinks—say, Scotty, I wonder ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... resorting to a book. Count the fauna: Eagle River, Bald Eagle, Buffalo Lake, Great Bear Lake, Salmon Falls, Snake River, Wolf Creek, White Fish River, Leech Lake, Beaver Bay, Carp River, Pigeon Falls, Elkhorn, Wolverine, Crane Hill, Rabbit Butte, Owl, Rattlesnake, Curlew, Little Crow, Mullet Lake, Clam Lake, Turtle Creek, Deerfield, Porcupine Tail, Pelican Lake, Kingfisher, Ravens' Spring, Deer Ears, Bee Hill, Fox Creek, White Rabbit—can any one mistake the animals haunting these places in earlier days? Trapper's Grove tells a story we feel, but need not ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... to the Culpepper Minute-men, who wore green hunting shirts with "Liberty or Death" on the bosom in white letters, and who carried a banner which displayed a coiled rattlesnake with the motto, "Don't tread on me." He took a part in the battle of Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth; he shared the hardships of Valley Forge; in fact saw almost continuous service from the time he enlisted at the beginning until the glorious end, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... captains of the armed vessels had followed their own fancies." In the latter part of 1775, M. Turgot, the French Premier of Louis XVI received a report from an agent of his kept in the Colonies that "they have given up the English flag, and have taken as their devices a rattlesnake with thirteen rattles, or a mailed arm holding thirteen arrows." The reason given for the maintenance of an agent by the French government was to assure the Colonists that they were esteemed and respected ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow
... may drive me to reform—I've thought of it. You're such a sympathetic listener, Doc. It makes me babble." His hand was on the door-knob. "Since you've nothing to say I suppose you mean to stick to your story, but you must admit, Doc, I've at least been as much of a gentleman as a rattlesnake. I'm ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... Spanish soldier at San Josef. You are near the water now; for here is a thicket of Balisiers. {138b} Push through, under their great plantain-like leaves. Slip down the muddy bank to that patch of gravel. See first, though, that it is not tenanted already by a deadly Mapepire, or rattlesnake, which has not the grace, as his cousin in North America has, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... far, when Sandy gave a wild whoop of alarm, jumping about six feet backward as he yelled, "A rattlesnake!" Sure enough, an immense snake was sliding out from under a mass of brush that the boy had disturbed as he gathered an armful of dry branches and twigs. Dropping his burden, Sandy shouted, "Kill him! Kill ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... compassion and magnanimity towards the poor and weak, are now uttering sentiments that four years ago would have been astounding beyond compare. These men feel that there is no longer any room in the world for the German. Society has organized itself against the rattlesnake and the yellow fever. Shepherds have entered into a conspiracy to exterminate the wolves. The Boards of Health are planning to wipe out typhoid, cholera and the Black Plague. Not otherwise, lovers of their ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... without delay— Young Doctor Green and shrewd old Doctor Gray— They heard the story—"Bleed!" says Doctor Green, "That's downright murder! cut his throat, you mean Leeches! the reptiles! Why, for pity's sake, Not try an adder or a rattlesnake? Blisters! Why bless you, they 're against the law— It's rank assault and battery if they draw Tartrate of Antimony! shade of Luke, Stomachs turn pale at thought of such rebuke! The portal system! What's the man about? Unload your nonsense! Calomel's played out! You've ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... moment over it in silence. Then he said:—"It is the first warning of the rattlesnake, I suppose. How many do they usually give ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... look at them," said Dick, who looked mightily relieved when, the head having been skinned, it was cut off and thrown into the bay. After that he became interested and helped Johnny with his work until he held in his hand the beautiful skin of a diamondback rattlesnake, over six ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... we war a-wastin' time an' breath," broke out Opdyke, furiously. "A man only courts trouble when he seeks ter gentle a rattlesnake—ther seemly thing ter ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... few feet to one side of the path and, very carefully, the boy climbed a fallen trunk and edged his way, very carefully, toward the sound: and there, by a dead limb and with his ugly head reared three inches above his coil of springs, was a rattlesnake. The sudden hate in the boy's face was curious—it was instinctive, primitive, deadly. He must shoot off-hand now and he looked down the long barrel, shaded with tin, until the sight caught on one of the beady, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... nature gave the natives teeth, was it not that they could pull out the upper and lower incisors, file them in points, and curve them in sharp fangs like the fangs of a rattlesnake? If she has placed nails at the end of the fingers, is it not that they may grow so immoderately that the use of the hand is rendered almost impossible? If the skin, black or brown, covers the human frame, is it ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... herself to be lifted up and placed on the sofa, and sat down like a child. Even at the instant came a flash of recollection bringing back the time, long past, when Winthrop had lifted her out of the rattlesnake's way. She felt ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... and the one massive hinge, hanging by a slender rust-eaten nail, had been wrought into a fantastic shape. As they drove through the gateway, a green lizard scampered down from the top of one of the posts, where he had been sunning himself, and a rattlesnake lying in the path lazily uncoiled his motley brown length, and sounding his rattle, wriggled slowly off into the rank grass and weeds that ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... railroad did he lift his head and then he drew a deep breath as if starved for pure air and spoke. "Not to-day Betsy! I can't face my friends just now. Someway I am making an awful fist of things. Everything I do is wrong. She no more trusts me than you would a rattlesnake, Belshazzar; and from all appearance she takes me to be almost as deadly. What must have been her experiences in life to ingrain fear and distrust in her soul at that rate? I always knew I was not handsome, but ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... the gaucho, who could have taken his life, but generously forebore. Not for the world would Rufino Valdez again engage in single combat with Caspar Mendez, and soon as setting eyes on the latter he draws bridle so abruptly that his horse starts back as if he had trodden upon a rattlesnake. ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... Fern, with at least three kinds of moss complete the list of "Flowerless Plants." Three little clumps of Violets are sending out new leaves. There are a few leaves of Partridge-berry vine, a yellow Oxalis, an Orchid called Rattlesnake-Plantain, having lovely velvety leaves veined with white, a few sprigs of Mouse-ear Chickweed, and, last of all, a leaf of a Jack-in-the-Pulpit plant, the corm of which was doubtless hidden among the roots of the Ferns. ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... in great danger for generally the little reptiles are tame indoors, but out of doors in the sunshine they become cross and ugly and their bite is more dangerous than that of a rattlesnake. ...
— Little Tales of The Desert • Ethel Twycross Foster
... latter was making a slight detour about a sage-brush. She turned partly around to laugh at Polly, when her burro made a sudden lunge away from the trail, and at the same time, a diamond- backed rattlesnake struck out from its coil, reaching at least two- thirds the full length ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... At Rattlesnake Spring de Yankees fin's whar Marster Jake's still had been, an' dar buried, dey fin's ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... in name at any rate, a fearful object to look upon, a remnant of antediluvian times, a huge, clumsy, two-foot lizard. The horned toad is quite as forbidding in appearance, but he is a harmless little thing. Here we are in the rattlesnake's paradise. Nine species are found along the Mexican border; and no wonder. The country seems made for them,—the rocks, cliffs, canyons, pitahayas, Joshuas, and all the rest of it. Notwithstanding their venom they have beauty, and when one is seen at the bottom of some ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... scattered about, and at one place the horse dashed with clattering hoofs between a couple of rocky sand-hills which, for a few seconds, hid the prairie from view. Here the mustang suddenly shied with such violence that his rider was nearly thrown, while a rattlesnake darted from the path. Soon they emerged from this pass, and again the plains became green and verdant. Presently a distant line of trees showed that they were approaching water, and in a few minutes they were close ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... morning, Captain Lewis found a large rattlesnake coiled on the trunk of a tree under which he had been sleeping. He killed it, and found it like those he had seen before, differing from those of the Atlantic States, not in its colors, but in the form and arrangement of them. Information ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... to be an Indian woman at Olancha who made bottle-neck trinket baskets in the rattlesnake pattern, and could accommodate the design to the swelling bowl and flat shoulder of the basket without sensible disproportion, and so cleverly that you might own one a year without thinking how it was done; but Seyavi's baskets had a touch ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... (estimate) taksi. Rather plivole. Ratify aprobi. Ratio proporcio. Ration porcio. Rational racionala. Rationalism racionalismo. Rationalist racionalisto. Rattle (a toy) kraketilo. Rattlesnake sonserpento. Raucous rauxka. Ravage (lay waste) ruinigi. Rave deliri, paroli sensence. Ravel maltordi. Raven korvo. Ravenous englutema. Ravine intermontajxo. Ravishing (delightful) rava. Raw (chilly) fresxa, frosta. Raw (uncooked) nekuirita. Raw (without skin) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Holmes entered the field of fiction with two "medicated novels," Elsie Venner and the Guardian Angel. The first of these was a singular tale, whose heroine united with her very fascinating human attributes something of the nature of a serpent; her mother having been bitten by a rattlesnake a few months before the birth of the girl, and kept alive meanwhile by the use of powerful antidotes. The heroine of the Guardian Angel inherited lawless instincts from a vein of Indian blood in her ancestry. These two books were studies of certain medico-psychological problems. They ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... their life is at the mercy of the sun, and is high or low, according as that rises or sets in the heavens. At Martinique, where at noonday it darts its devouring rays perpendicularly upon the cane-fields, and every one flies into the shade to escape its scorching heat, the rattlesnake traverses the country, monarch of all he surveys; he strikes rapidly with a vigorous tail upon the calcined ground; and woe then to any one who receives his bite! All the fire of the atmosphere has passed into his frame. Now go to the Zoological ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... himself again on the street, he began to curse mentally, looking at the swelling balconies of the rococo mansion. Rattlesnake! How she rejoiced at his marriage! When it had become a fact she would pretend indignation and scandal before her coterie; perhaps she would get sick so that all the islanders would sympathize with her, and yet, her joy would be great, the joy of a vengeance nourished for many years, on seeing ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... found this plant only a few times about Chillicothe. Mr. Lloyd identified it for me. It has very much the shape of a pear. The skin is quite hard, smooth, olivaceous-black with yellow mottling patches not unlike the skin of a rattlesnake. The peridioles, which are small ovate sacs bearing the spores within, are very distinct. The interior of the plant when mature is dark, and it breaks and disintegrates from the upper part very like C. cyathiformis. This is a very interesting ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... riding over the Rattlesnake Mountains, where often the indistinct trail led him through dark and narrow defiles, or along the brink of dangerous precipices, where the ground was of loose stones, perilously insecure. The mountain torrents, swollen by recent rains, had to be crossed unhesitatingly, and without ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... you something," went on Charley confidentially. "Do you know why a snake shakes its tail? It's generating electricity to shoot in the pisen, and the longer a rattlesnake rattles——" ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... firmly, "when I want to foller Cleopatra's fashion and commit suicide, I will hire a rattlesnake and take my pizen as ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... up to Salt Lake I met a little rattlesnake, He'd e't so much of jelly cake, It made his ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... there, which she was ready to lease to Hawthorne for a nominal rent. Lowell was going there on account of his wife, a delicate flower-like nature already beginning to droop. Doctor Holmes was going on account of Lowell, and perhaps with the expectation of seeing a rattlesnake; Fields was going on account of Lowell and Holmes. Mrs. Frances Kemble, already the most distinguished of Shakespearian readers, had a summer cottage there; and it was hoped that in such company Hawthorne would at last find the element to which ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Bill," he said again, quaintly addressing me by a name not my own—"believe me, she'd fight a rattlesnake and give ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... was that the Indians, about whom he had been dreaming, were upon him; his next that a rattlesnake clung to his finger; and finally, finding it to be the kitten bestowing some scratches on the hand that sought to bereave it of its prize, he uttered the latter exclamation, first in rage; but pleased that his condition was no worse, soon after called the poor frightened ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... scientific excursion on the great plains, with the lamented Prof. Mudge, he nearly lost his life. He had captured a rattlesnake, and, in trying to introduce it into a jar filled with alcohol, the snake managed to bite him on the hand. The arm was immediately bound tightly with a handkerchief, and the wound enlarged with a pocket knife, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... were dark, save for a tan vest which buttoned close around his throat; his boots were of the very best quality, and fitted the calf of his leg snugly, and on his head was an expensive Stetson, with the skin of a rattlesnake for a band. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... imps; I'd a heap rather play with a rattlesnake than him." He paused, to assure him self that Sikes was safely out of hearing. "I thought maybe I better tell yer while I had a chance. That ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... attitude, and the tail, with its rattle appeared below. The whole was gilded, and had a very good effect; but after the dock-yard men had completed the repairs, and the brig was painted, one night the head of the rattlesnake disappeared. It had been sawed off by some malicious and evil disposed persons, and no traces of it were to be found. I was obliged to report this to the captain, who was very indignant, and offered ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... consumption of a delicacy of strictly Germanic origin, known in the language of the Teutons as a rollmops. A rollmops consists of a large dilled cucumber, with a pickled herring coiled round it ready to strike, in the design of the rattlesnake-and-pinetree flag of the Revolution, the motto in both instances being in effect: "Don't monkey with the buzz saw!" He carried his rollmops in his pocket and frequently, in art galleries or elsewhere, would draw it out and nibble it, while disseminating inaccuracies ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... it particularly dislikes. For an already established tubercle requiring rapid action of the blood, such as may well exist among the birds and vertebrates of Jupiter and Saturn, I suggest a hypodermic rattlesnake injection, while hydrocyanic acid and tarantula saliva may also come in well. The combinations that so long destroyed us have already become our panacea." "I see you have these poisons at your fingers' ends," said Ayrault, "and we shall feel the utmost confidence in the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... blacks kill fish necessitates the employment of a particular species of spider known to the learned as NEPHILA MACULATA PISCATORUM. This spider was discovered on Dunk Island by Macgillivray, the naturalist of the expedition of H.M.S. RATTLESNAKE in 1848. It has a large ovate abdomen of olive-green bespangled with golden dust; black thorax, with coral-red mandibles; and long, slender legs, glossy black, and tricked out at the joints with golden touches. A fine creature, gentle and stately in demeanour, it spins a large web, strong ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... afraid of them, I went on in and closed the door. I doubt if Mrs. Hunt saw me, she was so intently watching the man, who kept on upsetting things. He stopped finally, and then held up on the wood a snake—a dead rattlesnake! We measured it, and it was over two ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... Snake? Well, the worst of all is Rattlesnake. Long time ago the Rattlesnakes were saucy Indians. They were very saucy. They had too much face. They could not be put down by much, and they got up for ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... pet, eh, Robert?" said Colonel Cummings, as they entered. He backed up to his stove and surveyed Squaw Charley good-naturedly. "Let me see, now: You've run the scale from a devil's darning-needle to a baby wolf. Next thing, I suppose, you'll be introducing us to a youngish rattlesnake." ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... the Buffalo Chief, surprised, "to the Buffalo roads, of course. We must be changing pasture." As he pawed contempt upon the short, dry grass, the rattlesnake, that had been sunning himself at the foot of the hummock, slid away under the bleached buffalo skull, and the small, furry things dived everywhere into ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... found a bed of that exceptionally poisonous mushroom named Pallida something or other ... the book said its poison was kin to that of the poison in the rattlesnake's bite. My eyes met with Hildreth's ... we needed say no word, both thinking the same thought that frightened us!... "how easy ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp |
