I32 CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 
eighty feet. About twenty feet up he rested a moment, 
and requested me to attach the bundle of smoking 
fagots to.a liane; he then drew it up to him and stuck 
it into a crevice. 
Then he went up again, —he didn’t “shin,” by 
clinging with his arms and legs; the tree was too 
broad, and the mass of vines and plants too enormous 
for that,—but he just seized a liane, like a rope, 
between his toes, the great toe and the one next it, 
and walked up, hand over hand, and toe over toe. 
The pannier fastened to his shoulders, and the cutlass 
dangling behind from his belt, gave him the appear- 
ance of a hump-backed monkey, as he ascended 
rapidly, half enveloped in smoke. Great parasites, 
with leaves like cabbage leaves, and orchids large as 
peonies, came crashing down, sprinkling me with 
water from their inverted calyxes, as he went on 
steadily climbing. 
At last he reached a point ‘just beneath the hole, at 
a height equal to the mast-head of a brig, and then, 
holding on with one hand, he drew up the firebrands 
and thrust their unlighted ends into a crevice a little 
below the hole. He signaled me to attach the calabash 
to a lialine no larger than a fish-line, which I did, 
and awaited further orders. Detaching. brand from 
the bundle, he thrust it into the hole previous to put- 
ting in his hand. He was almost hidden by a cloud 
of angry bees, who, stupefied by the smoke, did not 
seem to recognize in him an enemy, and hundreds 
alighted upon his shirt and pantaloons, and many on 
his bare legs. The hole was too small, and Meyong 
enlarged it with his cutlass; previously, however, he 
had formed a staging upon which to stand, about 
