[This is an excerpt from Richard Henry Dana’s 1840 book Two
Years Before the Mast. In this passage, Dana tells of his time
in the wilds of California.] There was another animal that I was
not so much disposed to find amusement from, and that was the
rattlesnake. These are very abundant here, especially during the
spring of the year. The latter part of the time that I was on
shore, I did not meet with so many, but for the first two months
we seldom went into "the bush" without one of our number
starting some of them. The first that I ever saw, I remember
perfectly well. I had left my companions, and was beginning to
clear away a fine clump of trees, when just in the midst of the
thicket, not more than eight yards from me, one of these fellows
set up his hiss. It is a sharp, continuous sound, and resembles
very much the letting off of the steam from the small pipe of a
steamboat, except that it is on a smaller scale. I knew, by the
sound of an axe, that one of my companions was near, and called
out to him, to l