African enslaved man skinning a giant boa hanging from a tree

African enslaved man skinning a giant boa hanging from a tree. The naked man climbed the snake and removed the skin with a knife and took 4 gallons of oil for use by the surgeons in the hospital. From an account in Captain John Gabriel Stedman’s The Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, 1796. Common boa, Boa constrictor. Handcoloured copperplate engraving from Reverend Thomas Smith’s The Naturalist’s Cabinet, or Interesting Sketches of Animal History, Albion Press, James Cundee, London, 1806. Smith, fl. 1803-1818, was a writer and editor of books on natural history, religion, philosophy, ancient history and astronomy.