38 CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 



against that wonderful background of tropical leaves, 

 with its depths of shade and gleams of light, with the 

 water dashing against the rock upon which she stood, 

 and parting in sheets of foam, what a charming naiad 

 she appeared ! Naiad she may have been, but she could 

 hardly have been called a Dry-ad, as the water had 

 caused her garment to cling closely to her shapely 

 figure, and was pouring from it. 



Once, breathless and excited, she arose, and came 

 to me with an ugly water scorpion between her fingers, 

 one of which was red and swollen, where the venom- 

 ous thing had bitten it. Thus we went on up the 

 stream until near the mountain lake, when our way was 

 stopped by a jam of broken limbs. Then we turned 

 down again until halted by a series of wells, worn from 

 the rock by the action of the water, twenty feet deep, 

 into which the flood plunged wildly, ever descending, 

 on its way to the grand leap of two hundred feet into 

 the valley below. While my companions searched a 

 side stream I remained on the banks by the trail. 

 Daylight waned and they came not ; the gathering 

 gloom urged me to be up and on my way home ; but 

 the trail was obscured, and I was not sure of reaching 

 my hut in the dark without a guide. So I waited, 

 perforce. Everything living seemed to have left the 

 river's banks, and the only companion to my solitude 

 was a gayly-colored lizard, which lay upon a branch 

 and watched me. In the interest of science — but 

 against my better feelings — I held a bottle before his 

 nose, and he walked into it. Then I put in the cork, 

 and later he was having his fill of rum ; not the first 

 victim of the bottle — and of science. 



Voices reached me not long after, and none too 



