JIMMY THE CHAMELEON 135 



Jimmy the First I met while being carried along 

 in a c ' tipoia " or hammock, a prey to fever. He 

 was sitting on the branch of a Lush when captured, 

 and protested violently at his removal. A box 

 was made, and James installed therein was fed 

 on flies, which he took suspiciously and resentfully. 

 This chameleon was with me a fortnight, and 

 during this time he became a little tamer, but 

 could never be induced to capture flies while 

 sitting on my hand or hat ; and he never got out 

 of the habit of swearing at me in the quaint way 

 chameleons have. He was lost in a camp on the 

 Luce River ; probably one of the servants who 

 had been punished let him go, in revenge, and 

 left me lonely and lamenting till Jimmy the Second 

 was found, a week or so later. 



My carriers, seeing how much the first 

 chameleon had been missed, brought me the 

 second, which they found on a tree. Jimmy 

 Secundus was smaller than the other, and though 

 he swore away at first, got tame very quickly, 

 learnt to hunt flies from my hand or hat, sit up 

 and beg, wear a little set of harness, and in fact 

 behave as all good little chameleons should. I 

 gained a good deal of prestige by wearing Jimmy 

 as a sort of button-hole and hat decoration, for 

 the natives consider chameleons to be actively 

 poisonous, and to have a poisonous skin, and seeing 

 that Jimmy did not do me any harm, they began 

 to think that I must be possessed of a big fetish. 

 The Portuguese, who called me " the man with 

 the chameleon," shared this belief about the 

 poisonous nature of the skin, which they supposed 



