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Sri Lanka Anaconda (Anaconda of Ceylon) Vs. Amazon Anaconda
South American name Anaconda is said to have been derived from
Sinhalese name, Henakadaya. Among many other dictionaries, The
American Dictionary of the English Language indicates that the name
could be an alteration of Sinhalese Henakandaya.
It is interesting to note Colonol Percy Fawcett (1867-1925), who
had close encounters, the run-ins with Anaconda while on an
expedition to mark the borders of Bolivia, had served in
Ceylon too where he met & married his wife.
Could it be possible, in Ceylon, that the tales of Anaconda had fallen
into the ears of the Englishman? The Scots magazine, in the year
1768 (99 years prior to the year of birth of Col. Fawcett, 1867),
published a narration of an encounter with a 33 feet long monster with a
girth as thick as a man's waist, devouring a leopard of monstrous size,
in the island of Ceylon. The narrator, an Englishman by the name E.
Edwin, said to had been a resident in Ceylon for many years.
The Ceylonese seemed to know the creature well; they call it
Anaconda, talked of eating its flesh when they caught it. And
they did. "He was cut up; and afforded a flesh whiter than veal, & as
they said that ate of it, finer tasted than any flesh whatever"
Could it be possible, Colonel Fawcett carried the name, Anaconda to
Bolivia from Ceylon? Fawcett had a run-in with one not long after he
arrived in South America. In his diary he noted: "We were drifting
easily along on the sluggish current not far below the confluence of
Tiger and the Rio Negro when almost under the bow of the igarit'e (boat)
there appeared a triangular head and several feet of undulating body. It
was a giant anaconda. I sprang for my rifle as the creature began to
make its way up the bank, and hardly waiting to aim smashed a .44
soft-nosed bullet into its spine, ten feet below the wicked head. At
once there was a flurry of foam, and several heavy thumps against the
boat's keel, shaking us as though we had run on a snag... "
The Colonel made seven expeditions between 1906 & 1924. On 29th Many
1925, a message was sent from Fawcett to his wife, indicating that they
were ready to enter unexplored territory. The three were sending back
the assistants that had helped them to this point & were ready to go on
by themselves. Fawcett told his wife "You need have no fear of failure..."
It was the last anyone ever heard of the expedition. They disappeared
into the Jungle never to be seen again. Despite Fawcett's wishes,
several rescue expeditions tried to find him, but without success.
Occasionally there were intriguing reports that he'd been seen, but none
of these were ever confirmed. So what happened to Colonel Fawcett. What
danger that had eluded in the past had gotten him this time? Hostile
Indians? A giant Anaconda? Piranhas? Disease? Starvation? Or was it, as
one told, he'd lost his memory & lived out the rest of his life as a
chief among a tribe of cannibals? Heart of Darkness by Joseph
Conrad? Red by Somerset Maugham?
The South American anaconda (Eunectes murinus) is a semi
aquatic boa that inhabits swamps. The family Boidae (boas and pythons)
includes the world's largest snakes, the South American anaconda
and the Asian reticulated python, as well as the smaller boa constrictor
and the tree and sand boas. Python (Molurus molurus) (Southern
India and Sri Lanka), is a large (maximum length 6-7 meters) & powerful
carnivorous snake with a large girth.
During the British colonial period in (1805-1948), a considerable
territory of the dense jungles in the hill country of Sri Lanka was
cleared for coffee plantations & then for tea plantations, following the
Coffee Blight. Could it be Sri Lanka Anaconda, which ambushed
upon prey ranging from leopards to deer, in trees rather than in marshy
areas as its cousins in the Amazon, gradually became extinct?
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