BEJUCALES 153 



tough game-birds like curassows and penelopes. On our 

 way to the forest through the provision gardens we 

 almost always succeeded in securing a few specimens. 

 They would be mostly finches, tanagers, tyrant flycatchers, 

 and those humming-birds found in the clearings or at the 

 edge of the woods. Silently we would enter the gloomy 

 stillness of the forest, for it was an understood thing that 

 we were not to speak except in whispers. If we were 

 separated we communicated with each other by imitating 

 the call-notes of the small owl.^ This is the bird of ill- 

 omen of the Trinidad negro, for is not the uncanny come, 

 come, come of the bird of night the call of death ? And 

 did not the boding bird which haunts the ruined piles 

 and hallowed urns round unhappy Turnus fly when he 

 had his last stand-up fight with the pious hypocrite who 

 is credited with having humbugged the queen of Carthage 

 and founded the Eoman Empire? The Trinidad bird- 

 butcher who helps to supply the hat market with feathers 

 is an adept at hooting like an owl. He knows that 

 hummers and other small birds, with generations of 

 grievances against the midnight murderer, will mob him 

 in numbers during the day if they can find him out. 

 So he sits under a tree and hoots in the dismal fashion 

 that freezes the marrow in the bones of superstitious old 

 women, and he puts a premature end to the life of many 

 a feathered beauty attracted by the spirit of revenge to 

 the hiding-place of the wily dealer in bird-skins. 



With the exception of those belts or tracts of tangled 

 creepers and bush called bejucales, the virgin forest, 

 although possessing an undergrowth, is not difficult to 

 get through. The bejucales are the dread of all those 

 wanderers in the woods who make a living either by 



' Glaucidium phalcBttoides. 



