bathing in the pool, and as we had a lady
with us, they were induced, though sullenly and with some difficulty, to
return into their scanty garments and depart. Never certainly was there
a more inviting spot to swim in, the more so from exciting possibilities
of adventure. An English gentleman went to bathe there shortly before
our coming. He was on a rock, swaying his body for a plunge, when
something caught his eye among the shadows at the bottom. It proved to
be a large dead python.

We had not the luck ourselves of falling in with so interesting a beast.
Great butterflies and perhaps a humming bird or two were flitting among
the leaves as we came up; other signs of life there were none, unless we
call life the motion of the plantain leaves, waving in the draughts of
air which were eddying round the waterfall. We sat down on stones, or on
the trunk of a fallen tree, the mosquitoes mercifully sparing us. We
sketched a little, talked a little, ate our sandwiches, and the male
part of us lighted our cigars. G---- then, to my surprise, produced a
fly rod. In the streams in the Antilles, which run out of the mountains,
there is a fish in great abundance which they call _mullet_, an inferior
trout, but a good substitute where the real thing is not. He runs
sometimes to five pounds weight, will take the fly, and is much sought
after by those who try to preserve in the tropics the amusements and
habits of home. G---- had caught many of them in Dominica. If in
Dominica, why not in Trinidad?

He put his tackle together, tied up a cast of trout flies, and
commenced work. He tried the still water at the lower end of the basin.
He crept round the rock and dropped his line into the foam at the foot
of the fall. No mullet rose, nor fish of any kind. One of our small boys
had looked on with evident impatience. He cried out at last, 'No mullet,
but plenty crayfish,' pointing down into the water; and there, following
the direction of his finger, we beheld strange grey creatures like
cuttle-fish, moving about on the points of their toes, the size of small
lobsters. The flies were dismounted, a bare hook was fitted on a fine
gut trace, with a split shot or two to sink the line, all trim and
excellent. A fresh-water shrimp was caught under a stone for a bait.
G---- went to work, and the strange things took hold and let themselves
be lifted halfway to the surface. But then, somehow, they let go and
disappeared.

Our small boy said not