The Dipsads (3)

Yet all the points I have mentioned—the heat, the lack of water, the desert, the infertility—will seem to you less unbearable than what I am going to describe, something that makes that country to be completely avoided. Crawlers of many kinds, of enormous size and in vast numbers, monstrous in shape and deadly poisonous, live in the country. Some of them live underground hiding in holes in the sand; others crawl on the surface—puff-adders, asps, vipers, horned snakes, ox-beetles, darters, double-ended snakes, pythons, and two kinds of scorpions—a big multi-jointed one that crawls on the ground, and a winged one that flies, though its wings are of membrane like those of locusts, cicadas, and bats. The number of these flying, winged creatures make that part of Libya difficult of access.