172 CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 
honored by these quadrupeds as their abdde. Barba- 
dos is said to have very few, and Grenada has large 
troops of them. Those of St. Kitts are numerous and 
do much injury to the crops. It is related that they 
have access to a passage under the sea, to Nevis, a 
distance of six miles. 
Before leaving Antigua I met an old acquaintance, 
a dentist, who had sailed in the vessel in which I took 
passage from New York, and who had left me at Mar- 
tinique, the first island of the chain at which we touched. 
Though he had never taken a degree, he was gener- 
ally known as “The Doctor.” He was an apt manip- 
ulator of the forceps, and had accumulated, during 
the six months we were separated, twenty-five hun- 
dred dollars, extracted from the innocent islanders. 
- Now, the doctor was a genius. He had a genius for 
making money, and a special tact for taking care of 
number one. Leaving New York with but sixty dol- 
lars and his stock in trade, he landed in the West 
Indies with his cash greatly augmented, and with the 
captain, mate, cook, in fact the whole crew, deeply 
in his debt. That I escaped with a whole tooth in 
my head I attribute to some special interposition of 
Providence. The doctor’s period of sojourn on ship- 
board may be divided into two portions: that in which 
he was pulling, or “ fixin’,” teeth, and that in which he 
was sea-sick. He was happy in the exercise of the 
former, and unhappy in that of the latter. When the 
doctor appears on deck with a particularly happy 
expression on his countenance, and polishing some- 
body’s molar on the lapel of nis coat, beware of him! 
The whole crew would then shudder with apprehen- 
sion. 
