he ordered one of his assistants to give him a drum and the basin of burning coals which had been blown red by the other. When these were placed before him, he was suddenly seized by a sort of convulsion, during which his face suffused with blood and his lips swelled and became purple. He coughed, and his mouth frothed with foam. We were apparently seeing the tortures of a man suffering from viper poisoning and watched him pick up the black snake, which lay at one side, bite its head, loosen the skin from its neck and begin to pull at this with his teeth.
Then he twisted the writhing form into a knot, closely resembling that on the enigmatical coat of arms of Seville, threw it on the burning coals and, when he had sniffed the roasting flesh, jumped to his feet, pushed back the hair from his forehead and showed that no traces of the bites remained.
The crowd roared in approval and relief, after they had been astonished and harassed by the conjurer's representation. With a rather lavish contribution of funds dropping into the basket of one of the assistants, the man of mysterious powers distributed amulets against snake bites to his audience. But here it was not the magic of the desert but European science that had been drawn upon and had triumphed, for these amulets were bits of paper carrying legends made through the medium of a rubber stamp and aniline colors. As we gave two francs, we received five of these charms, so that the reader need have no worry for us during our journey through Central Africa, the country of snakes, under the protection of the talismans of Abd Allah ben Hosim ben Reshid, that is,
