While treading a log thus, which gave back a hollow sound, the head of an immense rattlesnake protruded from a hole in the tree, its tail giving the deadly alarm, as it continued issuing forth, as if determined to dispute the passage of man in this desolate place.  The fearless Huron scarcely halted.  While picking his way through the swamp he had carried his rifle lightly balanced in his left hand, and he now simply changed it to his right, grasping it by the muzzle, so that the stock was before him.  He saw the cavernous mouth of the snake opened to an amazing width; the thin tongue, that resembled a tiny stream of blood; the small, glittering eyes; the horn-like fangs, at the roots of which he well knew were the sacks filled almost to bursting with the most deadly of all poisons; the thin neck, swelling out until the scaly belly of the loathsome reptile was visible.

The Huron continued steadily approaching the revolting thing.  He was scarcely a yard distant when the neck of the snake arched like a swan’s, and the head was drawn far back to strike.  In an instant the stock of his rifle swept over the top of the log with the quickness of lightning.  There followed a sharp, cracking noise, like the explosion of a percussion-cap, and the head of the rattlesnake spun twenty feet or more out over the swamp.  It struck the branch of a tree, and, dropping to the water, sunk out of sight.  The headless body of the reptile now writhed and doubled over itself, and smote the tree in the most horrible agony.  Oonomoo walked quietly forward, and with his feet shoved it from the log.  Still twisting and interlocking, it sunk down, down, down into the clear spring-like waters until it could be seen on the gravelly bottom, where its struggles continued as he passed on.

Not affected by this occurrence, the Huron walked on as quietly as before, his dark, restless eye seemingly flitting over every object within his range of vision.  The character of the swamp continued much the same.  A broad sheet of water, from nearly every portion of which rose numerous trees, like thin, dark columns, here and there twisted round and round, and, seemingly, smothered by some luxuriant vine; others prostrate, the roots sunk out of sight, and the trunk protruding upward, as if a giant had used them for spears and hurled them into the swamp; shallow portions, where the water was but a few inches deep, and then others, where you could gaze down for twenty feet, as if you were looking through liquid air.  These were the peculiarities of this singular spot in the wilderness, through which the Huron was journeying.