198 CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 
perience with the snakes had satisfied him. The 
attendants of the party had related to him the idle 
tale current among the negroes of the coast, namely, 
that the first individual who saw the soufriére-bird 
would surely die. Much more was the danger in- 
creased when the bird should be killed; and with 
what vengeance dire the evil spirits would visit the 
author of its death, they hesitated, shuddered even, 
to think. Consequently Toby was in trepidation ; 
his spirit was perturbed. Sullenly he performed his 
daily work. He even hesitated to go for water to the 
spring on the mountain-side —to “Jacob’s well” — 
which gushed from under a huge bowlder, forming a 
little pool, half a mile from the cave. He was com- 
pletely demoralized, and the incessant rain made him 
disconsolate; he sat in his corner resting his chin on 
his hand, his nose on his lips, nodding assent to his 
inward cogitations in a manner that boded no good to 
my enterprise. 
He had constructed a little shelter of sticks and 
leaves in a corner of the cave, where he slept by 
night on a scanty layer of leaves, and drowsed by 
day. The second day he informed me that he felt 
it imperative to go down to see his “stock;” that he 
had left his “stock” with no one to “care fur dem,” — 
a “pig high like dat” measuring a distance of about 
a foot above the ground, —“ one high like dis, an’ one 
high so, sah.” After this, I noticed that his anxiety 
for his stock increased with the inclemency of the 
weather. Altogether, I do not think Toby enjoyed 
his residence on the mountain-top, especially as he 
looked forward to the death of the bird with fear, 
while I could only think of it with feelings of lively 
