A MONKEY HUNT IN THE MOUNTAINS. 269 



"Haginamah, sah, because him have amah, an' look 

 like hog." Then I saw my mistake — hog-in-armor 

 — an applicable name. 



We inspected several traps, but found no arma- 

 dillos. When two-thirds around the lake, we came 

 to the borders of a swamp containing acres of plan- 

 tains and bananas in a semi-wild state. What a trop- 

 ical forest — those huge plants rising fifteen feet above 

 the ground, with their broad leaves flapping in the 

 breeze ! It seemed as though I had been transported 

 to a world directly beneath the equator. 



My companion enjoined caution now, for, the plan- 

 tains being heavy with fruit, it was possible we might 

 meet with monkeys, or at least such traces of them as 

 might lead to the capture of one on the morrow. We 

 floundered through the dark forest, the negro cutting 

 a path with his cutlass through the fallen leaves which 

 made a deposit sometimes waist-deep. In about the 

 center of the swamp he stopped me, and pointed to 

 the ground beneath an immense clump of plantains, 

 where I saw some scattered fruit, torn from the de- 

 pending stems above and thrown upon the ground, 

 half eaten by those wasteful creatures, the monkeys. 

 The bunches of plantains were some of them a load 

 sufficient for a man to carry, and now and then there 

 was a banana-plant, with a bunch of a hundred or 

 more. These plants, all of them, must have origi- 

 nated from some runaway negro's provision-ground, 

 abandoned many years ago. 



Following a broken and interrupted trail, as indi- 

 cated by fragments of banana and plantain, we finally 

 traced the monkeys to the base of a high cliff form- 

 ing part of the enclosing wall of the ancient crater. 



