The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 308: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE TIGER 279 idea was that a country which teemed with such monsters of the brute creation might likewise possess human beings of a giant shape. But it was only an effigy of black marble on which the Burker was gazing, — a Hindu deity that had survived, so to speak, the ruin of the temple which enshrined it. The Burker soon saw that it was only an image; he gathered courage, and he penetrated a little way farther, taking a position where the overhanging masses of a once shapely masonry protected him from the beams of the sun. There he sat down, and opening his knapsack, partook of his provisions. Another application to the gourd strength- ened his mind in the sense of a reckless desperation, and presently sleep stole upon his eyes. For about a couple of hours the wearied wanderer thus slept, and as heslowly awoke, it was to encounter the aspect of the colossal effigy of black marble. For afew moments he gazed with an appalled consternation, for during the interval of slumber he had forgotten where he was and what object he had last seen. By degrees, however, the recollection came back to his mind, and it was also by degrees that he grew aware of some lifelike motion on the surface of the black marble effigy. He looked with increasing horror in his gaze and in his mind, and his hair stood on end as he grad- ually comprehended the hideous truth. Numerous snakes, of small dimensions, were creeping over the Hindu deity, some twining around its brow, others dragging their slimy folds over its face, some twisting around its arms, some winding about its legs, others hissing as they trailed their lengths upon its body. The Burker discerned likewise that these reptiles were hooded like the cobra, though they were of a different colour. They were indeed the manilla snakes, endowed with a venom as deadly as the cobras themselves; but instead of lurking in the grass, they delighted in infesting old buildings and dragging their slimy coils over granite or marble. There was something appallingly horrible in the spectacle of those serpents thus playing about the motionless image, and the Burker, so soon as he could in any way recover from the consternation into which the sight had thrown him, rushed forth from amidst the ruins of that temple. His ears as he thus beat a precipitate retreat were saluted with such a commingling of horrible hissings that he fancied the whole reptile population of the temple must be swarming GOMilGdoc Ss) (©)