468 TROPICAL WILD LIFE IN BRITISH GUIANA 



Is it really necessary to mention that rats and mice exist 

 in the Hinterland? Though they annoyed us considerably 

 in the house, it was entertaining to watch them run up and 

 down a post, opposite to a suspended bunch of bananas, and, 

 finally, leap off, a distance of two feet, on to the fruit. 



Bats, also, troubled the fruit, until we made a wire net 

 fruit room. Vampires and other bats took up their abode in 

 the palm thatch of our house, and divided their attention 

 between the bananas and the litters of puppies, which peri- 

 odically appeared. The bitches kept by the Indians lose near- 

 ly all their pups, owing to the attacks of vampires. The moth- 

 ers know how to roll over and to brush off the horrid crea- 

 ture; but they are helpless to free their pups. Our pet would 

 run backwards and forwards, from her yelling pups to our 

 bed-room door, whining for us to come and remove the at- 

 tacking horror. Fowls must be carefully protected, at night, 

 in wire-net houses. Calves suffered severely. They became 

 emaciated, and some of them succumbed, ere they could grow 

 to be large enough to withstand the continual lancing. The 

 Negroes call the vampire Dr. Blair, after a famous surgeon- 

 general, who was much given to employ the lance. Upon 

 the occasion of my trip to the diamond fields of the Upper 

 Massaruni, in 1902, I was attacked by a vampire, during 

 sleep. I knew nothing of it until the morning, when my 

 attention was called to a large patch of blood upon my ham- 

 mock. Examination of my feet showed a round hole about 

 three-eighths of an inch in diameter and one-eighth deep, in 

 one of my big toes. The edge was regular. I felt no ill 

 effects, until it became necessary to wade creeks and lunge 

 through swamps of pegass, when, foreign matter getting in, 

 my foot was poisoned. Should a traveler not fear mosqui- 

 toes, he should, in certain districts, have a net to his ham- 

 mock, as security against bats. Indians wrap themselves up 

 in their hammocks. At the entrance to the bush, between 

 the Mission House and the River Bank, I saw about a dozen 

 bats, of a large size, for a few weeks only, during the heavy 



