A MONKEY HUNT IN THE MOUNTAINS. 271 



hole in it, an inch or so in diameter, where the monkey 

 had thrust in his hand to scoop out the pulp. They 

 gather the nutmegs also, but after biting the shell 

 throw them away, not liking them. Yet they repeat 

 this every time they visit a grove. 



The man decided it was better to leave the place 

 till morning, and I yielded to his superior knowledge 

 of monkeys, though I could not refrain asking why it 

 was not as well to wait for them then. He turned 

 upon me with: "You know macaque, oui! He heah 

 now, and den he no heah ; umph ! " Throughout 

 Grenada the natives speak French patois, and even 

 those who claim to speak English cannot avoid giv- 

 ing utterance to a French word now and then. 



We returned to the house, where I passed another 

 wearisome night. People from St. George's passed in 

 the evening on their way to La Bay, a distance of 

 fourteen miles, carrying loads on their heads sufficient 

 to stagger an Irish laborer. From a woman who 

 came up from the negro village of Delphi I bought a 

 Carib basket ; this art of basket-weaving having 

 survived the Indians who practiced and taught it. 

 The plant from which the baskets are made grows in 

 the deep woods a slender, reed-like shaft, with a 

 coronal of leaves about a foot in length. 



A man shouted out to us at dark, as he passed, that 

 a whole troop of monkeys came down to his grounds 

 near his cacao, where he might have shot one had he 

 tried ; and a woman also stopped and told us that an- 

 other troop had been feasting on the " mammee trees " 

 near her grounds, a few miles distant. Just before 

 dark, our dog rushed out and barked furiously at 

 something in a tall parrot-apple tree in the basin below 



