A DAY IN THE DEEP WOODS. 141 
the precipitous sides of one of the two peaks which 
form the double summit of Morne Diablotin. We 
were now in the region especially appropriated as 
his home by the Dzadloten, or “ Little Devil; ” and 
anxiously we searched, as we scrambled over the loose 
rock, for some trage of the hole in which he lived. 
Wherever I had been in the island I had heard of 
the diablotin, and my curiosity was excited to such 
a degree that I determined to clear away the mystery 
which surrounded it. For thirty years it had remained 
unseen. Many treated as a myth this story of a bird 
living in the mountains (for it is a bird) so long a 
period without appearing to human vision. But suffi- 
cient proof existed, in my opinion, to warrant a search 
for it. The older people of the island had distinct re- 
membrances of seeing it, and attributed its disappear- 
ance to the depredations of the “manacou,” a marsu- 
pial animal like an opossum, which hunted it from its 
holes and devoured it and its eggs. No two persons 
agreed as to its color, shape, or size; but I had seen 
in an old French work, written by a Catholic mission- 
ary to these islands some two centuries ago, —the 
Pére Labat—a good description of the bird. This 
description, doubtless translated bodily, I also found 
in an old history of Dominica, published in 1791. It 
says: “The dzadlotin, so called by the French from 
its uncommonly ugly appearance, is nearly the size 
of a duck, and is web-footed. It has a big, round 
head, crooked bill like a hawk, and large, full eyes 
like an owl. Its head, part of the neck, chief feath- 
ers of the wings and tail, are black; the other parts 
of its body are covered with a fine, milk-white down. 
They feed on fish, flying in great flocks to the sea- 
