266 CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 



wrestled with it. In town, seven miles distant, the 

 temperature was ten degrees hotter than here on the 

 mountain-top, ranging from eighty to ninety. The 

 sudden change in temperature chilled me ; the eleva- 

 tion depressed me. There were hooks for hammocks, 

 and an iron bedstead, but no mattresses ; the hooks 

 were high up, and my hammock (a netted "Ashan- 

 tee ") from long use now bulged like a pudding-bag, 

 consequently I was doubled up all night, neck to heels. 



The lake, elliptical in outline, two thousand feet 

 above the sea, is in full view from the house. A 

 range of mountains encloses all — two craters, and the 

 dividing ridge on which the house is built. An inner 

 circle of hills, clothed in tropical trees, rises around 

 the lake, forming the basin. 



The man in charge of the house, its sole occupant, 

 had a number of traps, or dead-falls, set in the forest 

 beyond the lake, for the agouti and armadillo. These 

 two animals, with the monkeys, are about the only 

 forest quadrupeds larger than an opossum remaining 

 in these islands. At the time of their discovery, the 

 Lesser Antilles possessed several species now exter- 

 minated. The most interesting was a small animal 

 like a dog, found by the Spaniards among the Indians 

 of Haiti, a native of the New World, called by them 

 the " alco." In St. Domingo there were no other dogs. 

 It was a shy, gentle creature, and perfectly mute, and 

 was as much beloved by the Indians as their children, 

 being carried by them in their arms wherever they 

 went. It is now extinct. The peccary, or " Mexican 

 musk-hog," once abundant in these islands, has been 

 exterminated from all but Tobago ; the hogs o( Do- 

 minica and St. Vincent being the domestic species 



