How They Captured the Python.

Hamburg, as many know, is the great headquarters of the trade in wild animals for menageries and "zoos." To Hamburg are shipped lions, elephants, and giraffes, captured in South and East Africa, tigers from India, jaguars and tapirs from South America, gorillas from the Congo, orang-outangs from Borneo, and, in fact, about every kind of beast, bird, and reptile from all quarters of the globe.

The warehouses of the two principal firms engaged in this business are interesting places to visit after the arrival of a "beast ship," with news of unusually large specimens of animal life.

The narrator made such a visit some months ago on the arrival of a remarkably large, brilliantly marked python, shipped from Padang, Sumatra. This colubrine giant is more than thirty feet in length, and was bespoken by the Austrian government for a zoo at Budapest.

But the story of its capture is even more interesting than the huge creature itself, for this python had fallen a victim to its fondness for the notes of a violin.

There is a telegraph line extending across Sumatra, from Padang, connecting that port, by means of submarine cables, with Batavia, and Singapore.

Along this line of land wire are a number of interior stations. One of these, called Pali-lo-pom, has been in charge of an operator named Carlos Gambrino, a mestizo from Batavia, Java, educated at the industrial school there.

The station is on a hillock in the valley of the River Kampar, and is adjacent to dense forest, jungle, and a long morass. It is a solitary little place, consisting merely of four or five thatched huts, elevated on posts to a height of six feet from the ground, to be more secure from noxious insects, reptiles, and wild beasts.

As a general rule Gambrino has little enough to do, except listen to the monotonous ticking of the instrument. For solace and company, therefore, he frequently had recourse to his violin.

Thatched houses on posts in Sumatra are not commonly supplied with glass windows; but Gambrino had afforded himself the luxury of a two-pane sash, set to slide in an aperture in the side wall of his hut, and some five or six months ago, during the wet season, he was sitting at this window one afternoon, as he played his violin, when he saw the head of a large serpent rise out of the high grass, at a distance of seventy or eighty yards.

His first impulse was to get his carbine and try to shoot the monster, for he saw that it was a very large python, and not a desirable neighbor. But something in the attitude of the reptile led him to surmise that it had raised itself to hear the violin, and he passed at once to a lively air.

As long as he continued playing the python remained there, apparently motionless; but when he ceased it drew its head down, and he saw nothing more of it that day, although he went out with his gun to look for it.

Nearly a fortnight passed, and the incident had gone from his mind—for large snakes are not uncommon in Sumatra—when one night, as he was playing the violin to some native acquaintances who had come to the hut, they heard the sounds made by a large snake sliding across the bamboo platform or floor of the little veranda. On looking out with a light, one of the party saw a huge mottled python gliding away.

But it was not until the reptile appeared a third time, raising its head near his window, that the telegrapher became certain that it was really his violin which attracted it.

In the meantime the operator at Padang, with whom Gambrino held daily conversations by wire, had told him that the German agent of a Hamburg house at that port would pay ten pounds, English money, for such a python as he described.

Gambrino began scheming to capture the reptile. In one of the huts at the station there was stored a quantity of fibre rope, such as is used in Sumatra for bridging small rivers and ravines.

Gambrino contrived three large nooses from this rope, which he elevated horizontally, on bamboo poles, to the height of his window, and carried the drawing ends of the nooses inside the hut.

This was done after the operator had ascertained that at times the snake would come about the house and raise its head as if it heard the violin.

Some time later the python was beguiled by the music into raising its head inside one of the nooses, which a native, who was on the watch while Gambrino played, instantly jerked tight.

What followed was exciting. The reptile resented the trick with vigor, and showed itself possessed of far more strength than they had expected.

The rope had been made fast to a beam inside, and the snake nearly pulled the entire structure down, making it rock and creak in a way that caused Gambrino and his native ally to leap to the ground in haste from a back entrance. The reptile coiled its body about the posts and pulled desperately to break away. Altogether, it was a wild night at this little remote telegraph station.

The next morning a crowd of natives collected; and as the python had by this time exhausted itself, they contrived to hoist its head as high as the roof of the hut and to secure its tail.

It was then lowered into a molasses hogshead, which was covered over and trussed up securely with ropes.

In this condition the python was drawn to Padang on a bullock cart. It is said to weigh more than four hundred pounds.