Note 19 — Chapter II · TRINIDAD AND THE ORINOCO

The picture was now complete. There was the serpent in this paradise of delights, as in the paradise of our first parents. And what added to the strangeness—the uncanniness—of the appearance of the serpent at this particular juncture was the extraordinary rarity of such an occurrence. One of the officers of the steamer told us that he had been sailing up and down the Orinoco for twenty years and had never seen one of these boas before. And more wonderful still, it was the first and last we ourselves saw, although we subsequently traveled many thousands of miles on tropical rivers along which such serpents have their habitat.19