CAMP LIFE IN THE TROPICS. 23 



had caught in the neck of a bottle. Or, as one other 

 night, when my slumbers were broken by a mysterious 

 rattling, and I awoke (thinking that, as Jean Baptiste 

 had prophesied, the "jumbies " had come for me, as 

 they come for everybody who sleeps alone in a strange 

 house), to find another crab vexing his soul in vain en- 

 deavors to shin the broom-handle. It may be surmised 

 that I soon informed my corps of naturalists that I could 

 dispense with their services, and now I am again a 

 lone investigator dependent upon his sole endeavors. 



In the afternoon I sit down by the loophole that 

 serves as window, (where by raising my eyes I can 

 at any time look off upon the peaceful Caribbean Sea,) 

 gather my birds about me, and, after noting their 

 measurements and other data necessary to aid in their 

 identification, proceed to skin and preserve them pre- 

 paratory to their long journey to the" States." It is near 

 sunset when this is finished, and after supper I climb 

 into mv hammock, or sit on mv threshold, watching; 

 the sun go down behind the mountains. If I were a 

 little further to the north I could see him down clear to 

 the sea ; and, in fact, I often climb a spur of a near 

 hill, where are buried the ancestors of the present res- 

 idents of Laudat, and watch the sun as he dips below 

 the sea, just gilding with his parting rays the rude 

 crosses that mark the last resting-place of those buried 

 beneath them. 



But what I have been most disappointed in as the sun 

 sets, is the absence of that prolonged twilight, which 

 makes our evenings of early summer in the north so 

 delightful ; when, after the sun goes down, there re- 

 mains that blissful lingering of day with night, when 

 the softened light fades so gradually away that we 



