Travels in India (Tavernier) 106.12

106.12

The other is to place it in a glass full of water, and immediately, if it is genuine, the water begins to boil, small bubbles ascending from the stone, which is at the bottom, to the top of the water. There is still another stone which is called "stone of the hooded snake." It is a kind of snake which has, as it were, a hood which hangs behind the head, and it is behind this hood that the stone is found, the smallest being of the size of a hen's egg. There are snakes in Africa and in Asia of an enormous size, and up to 25 feet in length, as was that one whose skin is preserved at Batavia. This snake had swallowed a girl of eighteen years, of which fact I have elsewhere given an account. You only find these stones in snakes which are, at the least, two feet in length. The stone, which is not hard, when rubbed against another stone yields a kind of slime which, when dissolved in water and drunk by a person who has some poison in his body, has the property of driving it out at once. These snakes are only to be found on the coasts of Melinda, and you can obtain the stones from Portuguese sailors and soldiers on their return from Mozambique.