DANGER FROM ALLIGATORS

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continually disturbed in the night by the alligators, but as they were natives they were too wary to be caught. We had a large English pig of a whity-yellow colour, with large hanging ears, which was the admiration of the people, whose own pigs were black, long-legged, and with pointed upstanding ears. This pig usually slept in the boathouse, and one night we were wakened by a frightful screaming, but before we got to the boathouse the alligator had already reached the water with the pig.

On another occasion some Woolwa Indians had come down from the interior and slept in the canoes in the boathouse. In the middle of the night one of them heard a noise, and shouted out, when the alligator lashed out with its tail and split the canoe he was in from end to end.

But what pen can tell the joys of Blewfields to us boys? Every season had its own special pleasures.

About January most of the men went away down south for the hawksbill-turtle fishing, and the women and boys were left at home. Then followed the dry season, bright, joyous, beautiful. When at nine in the morning the landwind died away, a squall or two and some showers followed; then down came the fresh sea-breeze, roaring among the trees, and lashing the lagoon into white waves-a cool, delicious, invigorating wind that never failed, steady at north-east. It made one long to bestir one's self and be off to the great world to take one's part in everything that is going on. You look up at the driving clouds and long to see what they are passing over, and go where they are going, and so one understands the longing of the migratory birds, and even of the butterflies and fish, which wander to distant parts, impelled by the seasons.

A district extending from the north of Pearl Key Lagoon to about Monkey Point is the exclusive home of the eboe, which is found nowhere else in this country. This is a gigantic tree, with immense trunk and spurs, like the

buttresses of a church. The wood is like rosewood, and so hard that the best axes cannot cut one down. In February it is covered with lovely pink blossoms, with a scent like bitter almonds, and about April the nuts are ripe, and fall to the ground in thousands. These are 3 inches long, about the thickness of one's thumb, round, but flattened at two sides. On the outside is a grayish skin, inside of which is an olive-green pulp a quarter of an inch thick; beneath that a hard shell, which nothing but the powerful beak of the macaw can crack, and inside is the eboe nut, 23 inches long, and as thick as one's little finger.

Soon the bush is filled with women and children gathering eboes. We suck the mawkish sweet pulp till we are sick of it, but the nuts are gathered in calabashes and carried home in great bag-like baskets made of withes and called oosnoos. Then the piles of nuts are thrown on the ground, and pigs and goats have a surfeit of the sweet pulp. When thoroughly dry, the women set to work to crack the nuts, and make the boys and girls help. To do this, you must get a good-sized stone, and with a cold chisel cut a socket in it; then take the cut-off end of a gun-barrel, place the nut in the socket and strike it with the gun-barrel, and it cracks open.

Then for a while everyone is eating eboes, which are excellent in every form. They are, however, chiefly reserved for boiling, when a quantity of very fine oil floats on the water. This is skimmed off and bottled for use or sale. It is chiefly used as hair-oil, and commands a price of five shillings a bottle in Jamaica.

Our chief diet in the dry season was cockles and oysters, of which great quantities exist in the lagoon. Gathering cockles was a delightful occupation. They are found in the muddy sand round the shores, but not in any great depth of water. On an appointed day, women, boys and girls wade into the shallow water and feel in the mud for the cockles; but standing and stooping is tiresome, and the sun roasts.

your back, so very soon all are lying prone on their faces in the water, each with a calabash in one hand, which is filled with cockles by the other. Chatting, laughing, and playing, this agreeable work is carried on for hours, till great piles of cockles are accumulated on the shore. The water, being at a temperature of above 80°, is even warmer than the air, so one does not get cold by being in the water for many hours.

Oysters exist where currents keep the rocky bottom clear of mud round about the islands, and in many isolated beds in the lagoon. Girls and boys are employed to gather them, which is done by anchoring the canoe on the bed in 4 to 8 feet of water. The boys and girls then slip into the water, holding on by the gunwale of the canoe, from which they dive to the bottom and fill a basket with the oysters. Often they are alarmed by the musky smell of an alligator, or the rank fishy smell of the shark. In such cases they scramble into the canoe and make much noise by beating the sides with their hands; but, strange to say, none were ever injured. I often joined in oyster-gathering parties, but I always had an instinctive feeling that my white skin was not safe.

It was more exciting to go with the men spearing fish. This pursuit is carried on in calm weather, generally before the sea-breeze comes down, and the immense shoals at the mouth of the Blewfields River are the most favourable place for it. In the lagoon are great numbers of calapever, which is a gigantic mullet, when full grown nearly 5 feet long, and the same shape as the common tropical mullet. There are also numbers of a still larger fish called snook, which is the Dutch name of the European pike. It is something like a pike, and equally voracious. The tarpum is a large fish with scales 2 inches in diameter, glittering like plates of silver.

The fishermen, two in each canoe, are provided with a light spear 9 feet long. At one end is fixed a fish harpoon,

generally made out of an old file, in which several barbs are cut. A light strong line of silk grass, 50 feet long, is fastened to the harpoon, and wound round a large wheel of very light wood, which is stuck on the end of the spear. Paddling gently along, the man in the bow sees the ripple made by a fish swimming near the surface. At the distance of 60 or 70 feet the man aims his spear, and throws it into the air in such a way that it descends on the fish almost vertically. One has only to try to see how difficult it is to hit an object in this manner, but the boys practise on cocoanut husks from their earliest youth, and practice will make perfect even in so difficult an exercise as this. When the fish is struck the harpoon comes out of the end of the staff, and the fish makes off, dragging the reel after it, by aid of which it is pursued and captured.

A more exciting game is the capture of the manatee, which is effected with the same weapons; but this is a powerful animal, and only after chasing for a long time and repeated harpooning can it be secured. This curious animal belongs to a race nearly extinct. One species lives in the sea, and is found in West Australia and New Guinea. It is there called dugong, and is the animal from which the fable of mermaids originated. Another species is found in Africa, and one species is only found on the east side of America and within the tropics.

The manatee is about 8 feet long, nearly 3 feet in diameter in the thick part of the body, and weighs 500 or 600 pounds. The female has breasts like a woman, and carries its young under its flippers. The manatee has a mouth just like a cow, and has no teeth in front, only hard gums. It has foreflippers, but no hind ones. The body contracts towards the hind-part into a tail like a spatula. It loves fresh and brackish water, and will venture into the sea, but does not care for salt water. It never leaves the water, but I have seen it half out of water munching the cutch grass that

grows on the banks of the rivers. It is covered with a thick slate-coloured hide, on which are a few scattered hairs, relics of the time, millions of years ago, when it lived on land and had legs, for hairs have no possible meaning in water. It has no ears, though its hearing is very keen, and its eyes are very small. The flesh is the most delicate and delicious, perhaps, in the world. It is pale like veal, and is all streaked. with fat-a most delicate fat-like that of a sucking pig. Two hundred years ago, according to Dampier and others, the manatee was very plentiful, but it is getting rare now. One of the most important uses to which the manatee is put is to make straps from its thick hide to whip wives and other delinquents.

I have mentioned the Indian named Bowman who lived with us. He was sent to Blewfields from Cape Gracias à Dios by the Mosquito Queen to hunt and fish for her children. He was a great fisherman, but not much of a hunter, though sometimes he brought us an agouti, a monkey, or a curassow. His fishing was chiefly done with the bow and arrows, and most of the fish he killed were tooba, a deep, short fish like a perch, of a bluish-purple colour. In fishing he would. softly paddle along under the steep banks, or glide along round snags, whistling all the time in a plaintive tone. Seated kneeling on the bow, bow and arrow in hand, he waited with the patience of a cat at a mouse-hole till the fish came near the surface, when he very seldom missed his mark. All day long he would idle about in this way with. stolid patience, never uttering a word, but constantly whistling to the fish.

The King and I used to make frequent excursions in our canoe, hunting and fishing all day among the creeks and over the great shoals of the lagoon. Often we took the King's sisters with us, at which they were as delighted and as eager as English school-girls are to go to a picnic. Old Bowman would shoot fish for their amusement, or we would