120 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



will have some idea of the moaning of the largest goat- 

 sucker in Demerara. 



Four other species of the goatsucker articulate some 

 words so distinctly, that they have received their names 

 from the sentences they utter, and absolutely bew^ilder 

 the stranger on his arrival in these parts. The most 

 common one sits down close by your door, and flies and 

 alights three or four yards before you, as you walk along 

 the road, crying, " Who-are-you, who-who-who-are-you." 

 Another bids you, "Work-away, work-work- work-away." 

 A third cries, mournfully, Willy-come-go. Willy- 

 Willy-Willy-come-go." And high up in the country, 

 a fourth tells you to " Whip-poor- Will. Whip-whip- 

 whip-poor- Will. " 



You will never persuade the negro to destroy these 

 birds, or get the Indian to let fly his arrow at them. 

 They are birds of omen, and reverential dread. Jumbo, 

 the demon of Africa, has them under his' command ; and 

 they equally obey the Yabahou, or Demerara Indian 

 devil. They are the receptacles for departed souls, who 

 come back again to earth, unable to rest for crimes done 

 in their days of nature ; or they are expressly sent by 

 Jumbo, or Yabahou, to haunt cruel and hard-hearted 

 masters, and retaliate injuries received from them. If 

 the largest goatsucker chance to cry near the white man's 

 door, sorrow and grief will soon be inside j and they ex- 

 pect to see the master waste away with a slow consum- 

 ing sickness. If it be heard close to the negro's or 

 Indian's hut, from that night misfortune sits brooding 

 over it ; and they await the event in terrible suspense. 



You will forgive the poor Indian of Guiana for this. 

 He knows no better ; he has nobody to teach him. But 

 shame it is, that in our own civilized country, the black 



