THE CHEGOE. ^ 241 
sight. Not wishful to encourage its intended co- 
lony, " Avast, there ! my good little fellow," said I ; 
<'we must part company without loss of time. I 
cannot afford to keep you, and a numerous family, 
for nothing ; you would soon eat me out of house 
and home." On saying this, I applied the point of 
my penknife to the place where the chegoe had 
entered^ and turned it loose upon the world again. 
In the plantations of Guiana, there is generally 
an old negress, known by the name of Granny, a 
kind of " Junonis anus," who loiters about the negro 
yard, and is supposed to take charge of the little 
negroes who are too young to work. Towards the 
close of day, you will sometimes hear the most 
dismal cries of woe coming from that quarter. Old 
Granny is then at work^ grubbing the chegoe nests 
out of the feet of the sable urchins, and filling the 
holes with lime juice and Cayenne pepper. This 
searching compound has two duties to perform : 
first, it causes death to any remaining chegoe in the 
hole ; and, secondly, it acts as a kind of birch-rod 
to the unruly brats, by which they are warned, to 
their cost^ not to conceal their chegoes in future: 
for, afraid of encountering old Granny's tomahawk, 
many of them prefer to let the chegoes riot in their 
flesh, rather than come under her dissecting hand. 
A knowing eye may always perceive v/hen the 
feet of negroes are the abode of the chegoe. They 
dare not place their feet firmly on the ground, 
on account of the pain which such a position would 
give them ; but they hobble along with their toes 
turned up ; and by this you know that they are not 
R 
