198 FBI or THE FIRE-F;LT. 



in their primitive simplicity. "We quitted Trinidad on the 

 night of the 15th March. The municipality caused us to b9 

 conducted to the mouth of the Rio Guaurabo in a fine car- 

 riage lined with old crimson damask; and, to add to ouf 

 confusion an ecclesiastic, the poet of the place, habited in a 

 suit of velvet notwithstrnding the heat of the climate cele- 

 brated, in a sonnet, our voyage to the Orinoco. 



On the road leading to the port, we were forcibly struck 

 by a spectacle which our stay of two years in the hottest 

 part of the tropics might have rendered familiar to us; but 

 previously I had nowhere seen such an innumerable quan- 

 tity of phosphorescent insects.* The grass that overspread 

 the ground, the branches and foliage of the trees, all shone 

 with that reddish and moveable light, which varies in its 

 intensity at the will of the animal by which it is produced. 

 It seemed as though the starry firmament reposed on the 

 savannah. In the hut of the poorest inhabitants of the 

 country, fifteen cocuyos, placed in a calabash pierced with 

 holes, alford sufficient light to search for anything during 

 the night. To shake the calabash forcibly is all that is 

 necessary to excite the animal to increase the intensity of 

 the luminous discs situated on each side of its body. The 

 people of the country remark, with a simple truth of expres- 

 sion, that calabashes filled with cocuyos are lanterns always 

 ready lighted. They are, in fact, only extinguished by the 

 sickness or death of the insects, which are easily fed with a 

 little sugar-cane. A young woman at Trinidad de Cuba 

 told us, that during a long and difficult passage from the 

 main land, she always made use of the phosphorescence of 

 the coewf&s, when she gave suck to her child at night ; the 

 captain of bb.e skip would allow no other light on board, 

 from the fear of corsairs. 



As the breeze freshened in the direction of north-east, 

 we sought to avoid the group of the Caymans, but the cur- 

 rent drove us towards those islands. Sailing to S. ^ S.E., 

 we gradually lost sight of the palm-covered shore, the hills 

 rising above the town of Trinidad, and the lofty mountains 

 of the island of Cuba. There is something solemn in the 

 aspect of land from which the voyager is departing, and which 

 he sees sinking by degrees below the horizon of the sea, 

 * Cocuyo (Elater uactilucus). 



