44 



CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 



Standing there by that silent lake, the morning mist 

 enshrouding me, that strange bird in my hand, I fell 

 at once into a train of musing suggested by the thought 

 that this might prove a species new to the world. There 

 is something in such a thought inexpressibly thrilling : 

 to feel that to you alone has been vouchsafed the first 

 glance at a being that has existed for ages undiscov- 

 ered and unknown ; has lived and breathed and sung, 

 generation after generation of the same type ; and that 

 you, who now hold its breathless form in your hand, 

 are the first to look upon it ! At this age of the world, 

 when man has searched the remotest confines of the 

 globe, to find an animal so high in the scale as this — 

 that has heart and lungs, and in whose veins the 

 blood courses warm and red — is considered an event 

 worthy of chronicling in annals that endure for more 

 than a single generation. 



Like these were my reflections that morning, — 

 meditations that caused me to ignore the superstition 

 of my ignorant friend, whose uneasiness regarding 

 the lives of those whom he considered I had placed 

 in jeopardy, was not soon allayed. 



Four species of humming-birds greeted me in my 

 first camp in the tropics. They fairly lit up the val- 

 ley with their gleaming coats ; not a bush or tree in 

 flower that did not have one or more hovering above 

 it from morning till night. 



Until the New World was discovered, the humming- 

 bird was not known to Europe. Though roaming from 

 the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic, it is ever American, 

 and never extends its migrations beyond the limits of 

 the Western continents. Of all the creations of bird-life 



