and thrown out of collar-work for a week, as I have seen happen more than once or twice.  The only method of keeping off the vampire yet employed in stables is light; and a lamp is usually kept burning there.  But the Negro—­not the most careful of men—­is apt not to fill and trim it; and if it goes out in the small hours, the horses are pretty sure to be sucked, if there is a forest near.  So numerous and troublesome, indeed, are the vampires, that there are pastures in Trinidad in which, at least till the adjoining woods were cleared, the cattle would not fatten, or even thrive; being found, morning after morning, weak and sick from the bleedings which they had endured at night.

After looking at the Coolie’s toe, of which he made light, though the bleeding from the triangular hole would not stop, any more than that from the bite of a horse-leech, we feasted our ears on the notes of delicate songsters, and our eyes on the colours and shapes of the forest, which, rising on the opposite side of the streams right and left, could be seen here more thoroughly than at any spot I yet visited.  Again and again were the opera-glasses in requisition, to make out, or try to make out, what this or that tree might be.  Here and there a Norantea, a mile or two miles off, showed like a whole crimson flower-bed in the tree-tops; or a Poui, just coming into flower, made a spot of golden yellow—­’a guinea stuck against the mountain-side,’ as some one said; or the head of a palm broke the monotony of the broad-leaved foliage with its huge star of green.

Near us we descried several trees covered with pale yellow flowers, conspicuous enough on the hillside.  No one knew what they were; and a couple of Negroes (who are admirable woodmen) were sent off to cut one down and see.  What mattered a tree or two less amid a world of trees?  It was a quaint sight,—­the two stalwart black figures struggling down over the fallen logs, and with them an Englishman, who thought he discerned which tree the flowers belonged to; while we at the house guided them by our shouts, and scanned the trunks through the glasses to make out in our turn which tree should be felled, from the moment that they entered under the green cloud, they of course could see little or nothing over their heads.  Animated were the arguments—­almost the bets—­as to which tree-top belonged to which tree-trunk.  Many were the mistakes made; and had it not been for the head of a certain palm, which served as a fixed point which there was no mistaking, three or four trees would have been cut before the right one was hit upon.  At last the right tree came crashing down, and a branch of the flowers was brought up, to be carried home, and verified at Port of Spain; and meanwhile, disturbed by the axe-strokes, pair after pair of birds flew screaming over the tree-tops, which looked like rooks, till, as they turned in the sun, their colour—­brilliant even at that distance—­ showed them to be great green parrots.