THE HAUNTS OF THE PARROT. 123 



material on the spot, with no foreign aid save a single 

 cutlass. 



I say food, but forgot to specify what it was and 

 how obtained. Meyong had brought us a luscious 

 morsel from that same palm, in the shape of a great, 

 fat grub, large as my finger, which he proposed to 

 fry at supper time. With characteristic generosity, 

 he offered me the whole of it, but I declined, and he 

 and his friend smacked their lips in anticipation. 

 This grub was from an egg laid in the decaying heart 

 of the palm by a black beetle, which always chooses 

 such a place of deposit for its eggs. The ramiers 

 were plucked and dressed, and some potatoes and 

 yams boiled. The former made a fine stew for sup- 

 per, after which, as we were all very tired, we sought 

 our couch of palm leaves. I threw a large piece of 

 gum upon the fire before retiring, and sat a while 

 watching the curling smoke and inhaling the sweet 

 incense. 



There was a moon, a bright moon shining in the 

 heavens, but I could not see it through the trees ; 

 it only turned the darkness of night beneath the foliage 

 into dusky gloom, and twinkled through the leaves a 

 single diamond ray. 



The voices of the night are many, but principally 

 issue from frogs and nocturnal cicadae. The most 

 conspicuous is the "crak-crak," which continually 

 repeats the two syllables forming its name, from sun- 

 set to sunrise. There are several frogs also that give 

 utterance to the most comical sounds ; but the one 

 that made me laugh was a small frog, like a rain- 

 frog, and what he repeated all night long was this : 

 K Rig a jig jig, rig a jig jig, amen I " 



