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 my hammock, or sit on my 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 
