r leaf-carpeted bamboo-glade appeared, yet a select little
company found life worth living there. The dry sand beneath the house
was covered with the pits of ant-lions, and as we watched them month
after month, they seemed to have more in common with the grains of
quartz which composed their cosmos than with the organic world. By day
or night no ant or other edible thing seemed ever to approach or be
entrapped; and month after month there was no sign of change to imago.
Yet each pit held a fat, enthusiastic inmate, ready at a touch to turn
steam-shovel, battering-ram, bayonet, and gourmand. Among the first
thousand-and-one mysteries of Kartabo I give a place to the source of
nourishment of the sub-bungalow ant-lions.

Walking one day back of the house, I observed a number of small holes,
with a little shining head just visible in each, which vanished at my
approach. Looking closer, I was surprised to find a colony of tropical
doodle-bugs. Straightway I chose a grass-stem and squatting, began
fishing as I had fished many years ago in the southern states. Soon a
nibble and then an angry pull, and I jerked out the irate little chap.
He had the same naked bumpy body and the fierce head, and when two or
three were put together, they fought blindly and with the ferocity of
bulldogs.

* * * * *

To write of pets is as bad taste as to write in diary form, and,
besides, I had made up my mind to have no pets on this expedition.
They were a great deal of trouble and a source of distraction from
work while they were alive; and one's heart was wrung and one's
concentration disturbed at their death. But Kib came one day, brought
by a tiny copper-bronze Indian. He looked at me, touched me
tentatively with a mobile little paw, and my firm resolution melted
away. A young coati-mundi cannot sit man-fashion like a bear-cub, nor
is he as fuzzy as a kitten or as helpless as a puppy, but he has ways
of winning to the human heart, past all obstacles.

The small Indian thought that three shillings would be a fair
exchange; but I knew the par value of such stock, and Kib changed
hands for three bits. A week later a thousand shillings would have
seemed cheap to his new master. A coati-mundi is a tropical, arboreal
raccoon of sorts, with a long, ever-wriggling snout, sharp teeth, eyes
that twinkle with humor, and clawed paws which are more skilful than
many a fingered hand. By the scientists of the world he is a