e busy "Jack-
Spaniards," as the wild bees or hornets of the tropics are locally
styled, building their clay nests under the eaves of the verandah, just
in the same way as the sand-martens make their habitations at home.

I also read a great deal, for a kind neighbour luckily lent me at this
time a couple of odd volumes of Captain Marryat's works, so that I had
now the pleasure of gloating over the wonderful history of Mr
Midshipman Easy, besides enjoying the strange episodes of Peter Simple's
eventful career. Both of these books were previously unknown to my
boyish ken, and I need hardly say how entrancing I found them. Even
now, after the lapse of so many years, I cannot hear the titles of
either mentioned, without my memory taking me back in a moment to the
garden of my old island home in the West Indies--the very perfume of the
frangipanni and jessamine being almost perceptible to my vivid
imagination, while my fancy pictures the scene around, and my listening
ear catches the faint rustle of the wind through the tops of the cabbage
palms!

Once, I recollect, when lazily rocking to and fro in my hammock, I saw a
large armadillo crawl out from amidst the brushwood under the trees, he
having probably come down from his cave somewhere up in the mountains
for change of air. This animal is something like a tortoise, only ever
so much bigger; and as the negroes esteem them very good eating, saying
they are better than turtle, I at once gave Jake a hail to let him know
of the arrival of the strange visitor, when my darkey hastened speedily
to the spot, securing the armadillo without much difficulty. Jake was
all the more delighted with his prize from the fact that my accident had
prevented me from going manacou hunting with him as I had promised. He
argued that the armadillo would serve as a set-off to Pompey's iguana,
which had been constantly "thrown in his teeth," as it were, ever since
his rival had killed it in my presence, the one capture neutralising the
other.

It may be wondered that I introduce all these little details of my
illness and subsequent recovery, but, "there's a reason in everything,
even in the roasting of eggs," says the proverb; and, when it is
considered that, had it not been for my accident, dad and mother with my
sisters and myself would all have gone to England in the mail steamer
together, instead of my essaying the voyage alone in a sailing ship,
these incidents are naturally relevant,