Australian Tales - Setis

* * * * *
A young gentleman, (with whom I was well acquainted), one morning,
took up his cap, from the place where he had left it the previous night,
when to his surprise, he found a small snake coiled up inside it. I am not
quite sure whether he had put the cap on his head before he saw the
snake inside it; but I do feel sure, that he did not put it on his head, after
he saw its ugly tenant, until he had given it summary notice to quit; and
had assured himself, more certainly than by bonds and covenants, that it
would never get into his cap again.
* * * * *
I was travelling on horseback, one sultry day, through a part of the
bush to the north, that I had never travelled before, when I overtook a
man on foot, who offered to put me upon what he called “a short cut” to
the place to which I was going. As the man walked beside me, he treated
me to the horrifying details of a murder which had been committed
sometime before, in a deep creek, into which we had just began to
descend. “Here you are, sir, this is the very spot where the murdered man
was found,” continued my garrulous informant, as I reined up my horse
and got off his back, to allow him to drink from the pure cool stream.
The banks of the creeks were precipitous; and the dense umbrageous
foliage above and around totally excluded the sunshine. Not a solitary
stray beam could pierce through the tangled masses of vines and
creepers; and even dull daylight itself could scarcely find its way to the
bottom. “Well,” I remarked, “this is the sort of place I should expect a
murderer to select for his dreadful work; where he would not be very
liable to be intruded upon.”
“It has been called ‘Dead-man's Creek’ ever since that murder;” said
my informant, as a wind-up to the sanguinary tale, which he had told
with such scrupulous regard to minute particulars, that I almost feared he
would want to give me a practical illustration of the exact way in which
the poor victim's head was cut off.
I was very glad when he had finished his story, for I never was fond of
tales of murder; and that awful recital by a strange man, in such a
gloomy spot, was particularly uninteresting.
My horse had finished drinking, and I was about to sit down on the
gnarled roots of a tree, which was close beside me; when to my horror I
saw, what appeared to me to be a cluster of snakes coiled up, on the very
spot where I had intended to seat myself. I hastened up the opposite bank
of the creek, tied my horse to a tree, and aided by the man, broke a small
sapling short off by the roots, then descended the bank of the creek