Deadly Rattlesnakes

"Out of a thousand persons bitten by rattlesnakes," saifl E. D. Rourne, oi Palm Springs, the other day to a Pomona Progress reporter, "I am sure that not fif ty ever really recover. So far as I know - and I have posted myselves thoroughly upon the subject for over twenty years, on the desert and in Arizona and Texas - there is no known cure for rattlesnake poison, in spite of the fact that many people have said that they were cured by whisky. You may depend on it that when a man says he was cured of a rattlesnake bite he is at least laboring under a misapprehension of the facts. There is a small snake similar to the rattlesnake in appearance, whose poison is not so venomous, and negroes bitten by it place lime upon the spot or else drink enoi.gh whisky to counteract the poison. Whisky, if taken in a large quantity, goes directly into the blood and counteracts the poison of the snake. But the regular Arizona rattler, from five to seven feet in length, is a deadly customer to meet. It does not give any warning, but strikes the moment it is disturbed, and it can strike an object almost twice as far distant as it is long. "A friend of mine, ex-County Clerk George English, was riding along in the saddle near Yuma, when a big rattler lying in the road leaped at him as he passed. It struck his bootleg, driving one of its fangs clear through the thick leather of his boot, through his trousers, just escaping the flesh. It required considerable kicking to shake that snake off, and when he was finally got rid of he started in pursuit. My friend had faced bullets in the army with nonchalance, but his hair stood on end when he saw that snake coming, and he jammed spurs to his nag and didn't stop until he had gone a quarter stretch. He knew as well as I what an awful thing rattlesnake poison is. He lost two men in one month from rattlers. My ranch is literally full oi rattlesnakes, and only last week my hands killed twenty-six in a field oi twenty acres."