154 CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 
gave us the impression that he had a hidden treasure 
near of some kind; he seemed as anxious to get rid of 
us as before he had been to have us come with him. 
When the old Indian visited the gorge again, Coryet 
was on his track, at a distance not to be observed, yet 
near enough to note his movements. He followed the 
bed of the stream running through the hot-spring 
basin until it was narrowed to a rivulet flowing between 
high converging walls of rock. A narrow ledge, 
sometimes in, sometimes above the water, afforded a 
pathway through, after following which for a few 
hundred feet, the old Indian disappeared in an open- 
ing in the rock. It was just wide enough for Coryet 
to squeeze through, but soon opened into a wide 
chamber-like passage so dark that the boy was terri- 
fied and soon beat a retreat. He could hear his 
guide, however, as he scrambled over loose rocks 
and stones, penetrating deeper and deeper into the 
cavern. He lighted a match and examined the rock, 
but discovered nothing save that it seemed veined with 
sparkling metal. He brought me a fragment contain- 
ing this ore, but whether it was gold or pyrites I could 
not tell at the time. I tried to save it for examination 
when I reached home, but it was lost. Whether the 
old man took the alarm or not we could not tell, but 
he did not appear at all that day. 
In the afternoon Meyong came in with a snake, 
a species of boa, and the only one peculiar to this 
island. He called it a “Serpent téte chien,” or Dog- 
head snake. It was twelve feet in length and looked 
capable of crushing a sheep to deagh —as indeed I 
was told it could. The little inoffensive agouti and 
birds are its prey, and it lives in holes in the earth and 
