IN PHOTO: An aerial photograph of a giant snake floating on the Baleh River in Borneo, Indonesia, has caused panic among the local population, according to the Daily Telegraph. The reason for the panic was the widespread belief in the region in the existence of a monster named Nabau - a giant killer snake with a dragon's head with seven nostrils, which can take the form of other animals.
“Usually, the length of those specimens that are found along the banks of rivers and streams is from 6 to 8 meters. I have seen a 10-meter snake, but here, according to the stories of local residents, are found much larger."
Most experts agree that the appearance of the snake in the photograph was the result of computerized image editing. Most likely, the snake was drawn in the place of the trail from the motor boat. In addition, the color of the river in the photograph is suspicious - experts say that in fact, the waters of Bale are much lighter.
In January 1907, thirty-nine-year-old Major Percy Fawcett first heard of the giant snakes of the Amazon, living in the vicinity of a tiny settlement of the Seringeros, near the headwaters of Acre. It was the last stronghold of civilization, beyond which lay uncharted regions.
“An official from Yoronga,” Fawcett wrote in his memoirs, “told me that he once had to kill an 18-meter long anaconda. Naturally, I considered this an exaggeration, but soon I had to meet an even longer snake."
This happened two or three months later on the Abune River, one of Madeira's tributaries, upstream of where it meets the Rapirrao River.
“We were carelessly drifting down the lazy tide,” Fawcett says, “when suddenly a triangular head emerged from under our canoe, followed by a serpentine body. It was a giant anaconda. I grabbed my carbine, and when the animal jumped out of the water onto the shore, almost without aiming, I fired a 44-caliber bullet. The bullet hit the snake right in the spine, three meters from the head. The water immediately frothed and the nose of our canoe received several hard blows, as if we had hit a reef."
Major with great difficulty managed to persuade the Indians to bring the boat to the shore. Their eyes were wide with horror; even when he was preparing to shoot, they unanimously pleaded with him not to do this, fearing that the monster would rush into the canoe, which happens to these snakes in a moment of danger. With great precautions, they moored to the shore and approached the reptile. The snake lay motionless, but its body vibrated with convulsions. Fawcett immediately tried to measure the length of the snake. Almost fourteen meters, her body emerged from the water, but another five meters were in the water, that is, the length was nineteen meters, or, as Fawcett writes, 62 feet. The thickness was not too large for such a colossal size: it did not exceed 30 centimeters, but, without a doubt, the animal went without food for a long time.
“Perhaps the specimen that I came across,” concludes Fawcett, “is quite rare, but in swampy places you can find traces of anaconda up to 1.8 meters wide (6 feet), and Indians and rubber collectors say that in these parts there are snakes, nearby with which the one I met seems small. The Brazilian Borders Commission registered, for example, a snake killed on the Paraguay River, which was twenty-four meters long!"
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When Major Fawcett reported to London that he had met an anaconda nineteen meters long, he was unanimously declared an inventor. Meanwhile, you can open his field diary anywhere and nowhere can you find the slightest discrepancy between his observations and the true sizes of the animals he met in the "Amazonian hell".
Fawcett was a dreamer, but not a liar. His assumptions or interpretations are subject to some fantasy, but all observations are set out in a military manner.
And here is another testimony of the president of the Parisian Society of Americanists, Marquis de Evryn. He was not a zoologist by education, zoology was not even included in the list of his main hobbies. But all the features of the animal world were recorded by him with pedantic diligence.
In particular, many pages of his observations are devoted to anacondas:
“Usually, the length of those specimens that are found along the banks of rivers and streams is from 6 to 8 meters. I have seen a 10-meter snake, but here, according to the stories of local residents, are found much larger."
Once, while swimming in a pie along one of the channels, the marquis fired at a floating anaconda approximately 8 meters long. He stopped the boat and wanted to fish out the snake that sank to the bottom, but one of the Indians told him that he should not waste gunpowder on such a small specimen, and even more should not be fiddling with it.
“On the river Guaviara,” said the Indian, “in some creeks and in the surrounding swamps, there are snakes twice as long as the one you shot. Their thickness often exceeds the width of our pies."
The Indian guides told the white stranger about one meeting with such an anaconda.
… During the flood of the river, several Piapoco Indians, returning to their village in the upper reaches of the Uva River, decided to sail a shorter route, along the lakes that merged with each other.
The waves started, although there was no wind. It turned out that the waves were caused by the movement of a snake, whose body was located in two lakes at once. Where the pirogue had just swam, the water boiled especially strongly, and if the boat had not passed this place, it would inevitably have been overturned. The Indians vowed never to appear here again.
FATHER HEINZ'S SUKURIYU GIANT
Among those who believed in the existence of the giant anaconda was the director of the zoo in Hamburg, Lorenz Hagenbeck. For centuries, travelers and animal catchers have sent the Hagenbecks, a famous family of naturalists, descriptions of fauna from countries around the world.
Their family dossier contains information about animals forgotten by scientists, as well as those whose existence was generally denied. One of these animals was a water snake from the Amazon, whose dimensions exceeded the length of the anaconda and which eyewitnesses called "sucuriya giant", that is, "giant boa".
So, in the dossier of Lorenz Hagenbeck there is a testimony of the priest Father Victor Heinz, from whom he received information about the "sukuriya giant", as the holy father called it.
“My meeting with the giant snake,” writes Father Heinz, “took place on October 29, 1929. I was returning by river from Alemker at 7 pm, when the heat subsided a little. By midnight we were near the mouth of the Piaba. Suddenly my crew, seized with incomprehensible horror, began to row towards the shore.
- What happened? - I shouted. - There … A huge animal! - An agitated voice answered me.
At that moment, I made out a seething sound, reminiscent of the noise of a steam engine, and then I saw two greenish lanterns a few meters above the water, similar to those that are lit on the masts of river steamers. Then I shouted:
- Stop, it's a steamer! Paddle in that direction so that he doesn't run into us!
- This is not a steamer! - answered me - Una cobra grande! 1
Frozen with fear, we watched the approaching monster. It was moving away from us to the other side. It took him about a minute to cross the river, whereas we would have spent 10-15 times more time on it.
Feeling the solid ground under our feet, we grew bolder and even began to shout to lure him out again. A little to the side, on the other side, a man appeared, waving a lantern. He decided that someone had gone astray. At the same moment, a snake's head appeared not far from him, and we were able to clearly see the difference between the light of a kerosene lantern and the phosphorescent eyes of the monster. Later, the inhabitants of this region told me that sucuria lives in the mouth of the Piaba."
Hardly anyone would doubt that an animal of this size has truly titanic strength. Father Heinz also says:
“On a channel that leads from Lake Maruricaza to the Iguarape River, a Brazilian named João Peña cleared the bank on September 27, 1930, to make it easier for the turtles. By chance, he noticed behind a blockage of trunks brought in by the stream, which a five-hundred-ton vessel can hardly pierce, and along which it is often possible, without getting your feet wet, to go from one bank to the other, two green lights.
Peña decided at first that he was a turtle egg hunter. Suddenly, the entire blockage flew into the air, and the Brazilian was overturned by a wave several meters high. Two of his sons jumped out at the noise, and all three saw a huge snake crawling out / to the other side. The channel was freed, and the trunks were scattered for tens of meters around."
The dossier of Lorenz Hagenbeck was replenished not only with the stories of Father Viktor Heinz, but also with two rare photographs depicting incredibly giant snakes. The difference between these photographs is fifteen years. They were published in a newspaper in Rio de Janeiro. V The officials on the Border Commission who brought the first photograph told its last owner that the pictured snake was killed by machine gun in 1933. Squirming in agony, she broke several small trees. The snake was about 10 meters long, and four people could hardly lift only its head!
The second photo was taken in 1948. The snake, 35 meters long, according to eyewitnesses, crawled into the old fortifications of the Abuna fort. She was killed from machine guns, firing about 500 bullets at her. Since the meat would quickly decompose in the heat, and the skin had no commercial value, the snake was thrown into the river.
Based on the collected documentary evidence, Lorenz Gagenbeck announced that the "sukuriya giant" is not a myth, but a real being. He believed that this snake reaches a length of 40 meters and a width of 80 centimeters, and its weight can be up to 5 tons! Its color is dark brown, the bottom is off-white, its eyes are large and in the dark they glow with a greenish light.
Assuming that the dimensions attributed to the monstrous boa were most often exaggerated by eyewitnesses (out of fear!), It should be admitted that those who deny their existence are based on even more dubious propositions and facts.
And here is an excerpt from the book "Traveling Africa" by the journalist Ian Ballantyne
… “Mgo invited me and Dan to go on a primitive hunt - to show how in ancient times his ancestors, armed with a wooden spear with a tip burnt at a fire,“concealed”an antelope. Near the path to the watering hole, our black friend built a hut from thick branches, lianas and palm leaves, and before dawn we climbed inside, anticipating an interesting sight.
Disguised as branches, we enjoyed the peace that reigned around, however, holding a spear and two darts at the ready. Other weapons, three times "alas", Dan and I did not guess to take, madmen.
Suddenly, Mgo, bulging his eyes, pushed me in the side and silently pointed with his finger: emerging from the coastal backwater, a huge python slowly pulled ashore its long, mosaic-decorated body as thick as the torso of an English pub. Dan dropped the camera, my jaw dropped and my hair stood on end in horror.
The python crawled without haste, apparently without a definite purpose, and, it seemed, had not yet fully awakened from a long sleep. Mgo, petrified, carefully watched the terrible creature, but I, running ahead, say that I did not even suspect about the possibility of such a giant to move at the speed of a running boar.
We hid in our hut and closely watched the actions of the python. Mgo whispered to me that he saw this for the first time in his life. This monster was certainly stronger than half a dozen lions and more dangerous than a bunch of black cobras.
Python (O Almighty!) Was approaching our ambush! Mgo rested the spear with the shaft against the ground, exposing the tip; I armed myself with a dart. In large predators, you always feel a life similar to your own, and this infinitely long, disgustingly slippery body, devoid of limbs, with the motionless gaze of cold round eyes on the massive head, caused a feeling of horror, disgust and utter despair.
Approaching the hut, the python raised its head and opened its huge mouth with flat jaws.
“If he attacks, I will hit him with a spear, and then - come what may,” whispered Mgo, who had shrunk into a ball of muscles. “We won't be able to escape from him anyway…” The
broad, flat head moved close to the green curtain and tried to carefully squeeze between the vines and thick branches of the hut. Mgo swung his spear and thrust it straight into the open mouth. We froze in horror, sticky cold sweat dripping from my head like water from a swimmer's body.
The python recoiled with a menacing hiss, furiously wriggling with all his huge, at least ten meters body. An unexpected and invisible enemy forced him to retreat to the river for a while. We were preparing for the second attack …
And then a young antelope emerged from the bushes and crossed the clearing. Seeing her, the monster python froze in place. The female raised her hunched-nosed head with graceful horns and drew in air with her nostrils. Apparently, she was nevertheless alarmed by the smell of people, although we had thoroughly rubbed ourselves in advance with some fragrant leaves brought by Mgo. She turned back to move away from the suspicious place, and then only noticed the python. Seized by a large shudder, the antelope froze, as if paralyzed, unable to tear its gaze from the hypnotizing red eyes of the monster. Then, coming to her senses, she darted to the side. But the lithe mosaic body instantly rushed after her with the speed of a leopard. The antelope stumbled over some root, staggered … A terrible blow knocked her down, throwing her far to the side.
However, before the lightning-fast moving python had time to entwine the animal with mighty deadly rings, the antelope jumped up and in mortal fear rushed away, not making out the road. Thirty meters later, finding herself on the edge of the river cliff, she looked back and saw that the python had cut off her escape route.
Trembling with horror, the antelope turned its head towards the green plain stretching before it, already freed from the morning fog. With just a few successful jumps, she was saved. Having swept about, the antelope made an unsuccessful attempt to slip past the monster along the very edge of the cliff and suddenly, in despair, jumped over a living obstacle in a huge jump!
A lashing blow from the mighty tail overtook her in the air, knocked her down onto the grass, and her cold, slippery body twisted around the trembling, panting animal with lightning speed. The gaping huge mouth began to literally put on the carcass of the antelope, which turned into a bleeding sack with broken bones. It was all over in a few minutes …
For about two hours, the python lay in the place where he had breakfast with a 50-kg antelope. Then he slowly slid into the murky water and disappeared.
After this incident, several times, armed to the teeth with automatic rifles and machetes, we waited for the nasty monster in our hut at the watering hole, but the giant python never appeared.
Translated from English by Alexander EVTEEV