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 cicade. 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: 
“Rig a jig jig, rig a jig jig, amen!” 
