tropical sable. I find the alledged subspecies
is not accepted by European scientists.

XI.

A MARCH ALONG THE COAST.

With a most comfortable feeling that my task was done, that suddenly the
threatening clouds of killing work had been cleared up, I was now
privileged to loaf and invite my soul on this tropical green hilltop
while poor F. put in the days trying to find another sable. Every
morning he started out before daylight. I could see the light of his
lantern outside the tent; and I stretched myself in the luxurious
consciousness that I should hear no deprecating but insistent "hodie"
from my boy until I pleased to invite it. In the afternoon or evening F.
would return, quite exhausted and dripping, with only the report of new
country traversed. No sable; no tracks of sable; no old signs, even, of
sable. Gradually it was borne in on me how lucky I was to have come upon
my magnificent specimen so promptly and in such favourable
circumstances.

A leisurely breakfast alone, with the sun climbing; then the writing of
notes, a little reading, and perhaps a stroll to the village or along
the top of the ridge. At the heat of noon a siesta with a cool cocoanut
at my elbow. The view was beautiful on all sides; our great tree full of
birds; the rising and dying winds in the palms like the gathering
oncoming rush of the rains. From mountain to mountain sounded the wild,
far-carrying ululations of the natives, conveying news or messages
across the wide jungle. Towards sunset I wandered out in the groves,
enjoying the many bright flowers, the tall, sweet grasses, and the
cocoa-palms against the sky. Piles of cocoanuts lay on the ground,
covered each with a leaf plaited in a peculiarly individual manner to
indicate ownership. Small boys, like little black imps, clung naked
half-way up the slim trunks of the palms, watching me bright-eyed above
the undergrowth. In all directions, crossing and recrossing, ran a maze
of beaten paths. Each led somewhere, but it would require the memory
of--well, of a native, to keep all their destinations in mind.

I used to follow some of them to their ending in little cocoa-leaf
houses on the tops of knolls or beneath mangoes; and would talk with the
people. They were very grave and very polite, and seemed to be living
out their lives quite correctly according to their conceptions. Again,
it was borne in on me that these people are not stumbling along the
course of evolution in our