California Serpents.
Several Accounts of Very Large Snakes in the Yuba Country.
From the Grass Valley Tidings.
Syracuse, New York, Standard, July 7, 1884
"Four years ago Fred Campbell was down in the neighborhood of Smartsville, to which place he was delivering a wagon load of soda water. We mention what the cargo was so that it may not be said that he had bad whiskey aboard. A man was with Campbell. As they were going along the road near Mooney's Flat they heard a noise in the bush fence on one side, and, looking, they saw the head of a huge serpent emerge from the fence. The snake was a monster in size, and Campbell and his companion looked closely at it. They described the body, about the middle, to be as large as a flour barrel, and the length of the snake was certainly over fifty-one feet. They ascertained this approximate length by observing that when the tail was just leaving the fence the head of the serpent was near a certain bush, and the bush was about forty-one feet from the hole in the fence where the snake broke through. This distance was measured. but the snake was not in a straight line between the two point, for it had the undulations that all serpents use to enable them to crawl. The big snake moved very rapidly toward the Yuba river and was in sight for only some five seconds.
"Before Campbell saw this monster, many persons had reported seeing a very large snake in the vicinity of Industry Bar, at the junction of the Yuba river and Deer creek. Since Fred Campbell's narrative, every once and awhile we have heard of persons seeing a great snake somewhere on the line of one of the branches of the Yuba. Near French Corral, Freeman's Crossing, and other places, this kind of a big snake has been reported as being seen. The latest account we have is from Dr. Holdsworth, an excellent and truthful gentleman, who resides at Milton, in Sierra county. He says that during the latest snow storm he saw a track made in the snow as if a snow shoe had passed along, but the shape of the track and the route that it followed showed that no human being could have made it. About a week ago he found out what made the track, for then he saw sporting in the water of the creek near where the tracks were a huge monster, fully twenty feet long, which resembled a snake. We have no doubt but the snake Dr. Holdsworth saw is the younger brother or younger sister of the snake Fred Campbell saw near Smartsville. We seriously believe there is a family, so to speak; of gigantic indigenous serpents that inhabit the banks of the Yuba river in the foot hills and the higher mountain regions. Too many have seen such things to allow a doubt of their existence."
