d
skins after death.

But there is the signal-gun, announcing the arrival of the Mail from
home. And till it departs again there will be no time to add to
this hasty, but not unfaithful, sketch of first impressions in a
tropic island.

CHAPTER VI: MONOS

Early in January, I started with my host and his little suite on an
expedition to the islands of the Bocas. Our object was twofold: to
see tropical coast scenery, and to get, if possible, some Guacharo
birds (pronounced Huacharo), of whom more hereafter. Our chance of
getting them depended on the sea being calm outside the Bocas, as
well as inside. The calm inside was no proof of the calm out. Port
of Spain is under the lee of the mountains; and the surf might be
thundering along the northern shore, tearing out stone after stone
from the soft cliffs, and shrouding all the distant points in salt
haze, though the gulf along which we were rowing was perfectly
smooth, and the shipping and the mangrove scrub and the coco-palms
hung double, reflected as in a mirror, not of glass but of mud; and
on the swamps of the Caroni the malarious fog hung motionless in
long straight lines, waiting for the first blaze of sunrise to
sublime it and its invisible poisons into the upper air, where it
would be swept off, harmless, by the trade-wind which rushed along
half a mile above our heads.

So away we rowed, or rather were rowed by four stalwart Negroes,
along the northern shore of the gulf, while the sun leapt up
straight astern, and made the awning, or rather the curtains of the
awning, needful enough. For the perpendicular rays of the sun in
the Tropics are not so much dreaded as the horizontal ones, which
strike on the forehead, or, still more dangerous, on the back of the
head; and in the West Indies, as in the United States, the early
morning and the latter part of the afternoon are the times for
sunstrokes. Some sort of shade for the back of the head is
necessary for an European, unless (which is not altogether to be
recommended) he adopts the La Platan fashion of wearing the natural,
and therefore surest, sunshade of his own hair hanging down to his
shoulders after the manner of our old cavaliers.

The first islands which we made--The Five Islands, as they are
called--are curious enough. Isolated remnants of limestone, the
biggest perhaps one hundred yards long by one hundred feet high,
channelled and honeycombed into