A -MONKEY HUNT IN THE MOUNTAINS. 269 
“Haginamah, sah, because him have amah, an’ look 
like hog.” Then I saw my mistake — hog-in-armor 
—an applicable name. 
We inspected several traps, but found no arma- 
dillos. When two-thirds around the lake, we came 
to the borders of a swamp containing acres of plan- 
tains and bananas in a semi-wild state. What a trop- 
ical forest — those huge plants rising fifteen feet above 
the ground, with their broad leaves flapping in the 
breeze! It seemed as though I had been transported 
to a world directly beneath the equator. 
My companion enjoined caution now, for, the plan- 
tains being heavy with fruit, it was possible we might - 
meet with monkeys, or at least such traces of them as 
might lead to the capture of one on the morrow. We 
floundered through the dark forest, the negro cutting 
a path with his cutlass through the fallen leaves which 
made a deposit sometimes waist-deep. In about the 
center of the swamp he stopped me, and pointed to 
the ground beneath an immense clump of plantains, 
where I saw some scattered fruit, torn from the de- 
pending stems above and thrown upon the ground, 
half eaten by those wasteful creatures, the monkeys. 
The bunches of plantains were some of them a load 
sufficient for a man to carry, and now and then there 
was a banana-plant, with a bunch. of a hundred or 
more. These plants, all of them, must have origi- 
nated from some runaway negro’s provision-ground, 
abandoned many years ago. 
Following a broken and interrupted trail, as indi- 
cated by fragments of banana and plantain, we finally 
traced the monkeys to the base of a high cliff form- 
ing part of the enclosing wall of the ancient crater. 
