by side, like a pair of little lighthouses, and survey the field of battle in a fashion utterly ludicrous.  Moreover, as if he were not ridiculous enough even thus, he is (as Mr. Wood well puts it) like a small man gifted with one arm of Hercules, and another of Tom Thumb.  One of his claw arms, generally the left, has dwindled to a mere nothing, and is not seen; while along the whole front of his shell lies folded one mighty right arm, on which he trusts; and with that arm, when danger appears, he beckons the enemy to come on, with such wild defiance, that he has gained therefrom the name of Gelasimus Vocans (’The Calling Laughable’); and it were well if all scientific names were as well fitted.  He is, as might be guessed, a shrewd fighter, and uses the true old ‘Bristol guard’ in boxing, holding his long arm across his body, and fencing and biting therewith swiftly and sharply enough.  Moreover, he is a respectable animal, and has a wife, and takes care of her; and to see him in his glory, it is said, he should be watched sitting in the mouth of his ’burrow, his spouse packed safe behind him inside, while he beckons and brandishes, proclaiming to all passers-by the treasure which he protects, while he defies them to touch it.

Such is the ‘Calling Crab,’ of whom I must say, that if he was not made on purpose to be laughed at, then I should be induced to suspect that nothing was made for any purpose whatsoever.

After which sight, and weary of waiting, not without some fear that--as the Negroes would have put it—­’If I tap da wan momant ma, I catch da confection,’ while, of course, a bucket or two of hot water was emptied on us out of a passing cloud, I got on board the steamer, and away to San Fernando, to wash away dirt and forget fatigue, amid the hospitality of educated and high-minded men, and of even more charming women.

CHAPTER XI:  THE NORTHERN MOUNTAINS

I had heard and read much of the beauty of mountain scenery in the Tropics.  What I had heard and read is not exaggerated.  I saw, it is true, in this little island no Andes, with such a scenery among them and below them as Humboldt alone can describe—­a type of the great and varied tropical world as utterly different from that of Trinidad as it is from that of Kent—­or Siberia.  I had not even the chance of such a view as that from the Silla of Caraccas described by Humboldt, from which you look down at a height of nearly six thousand feet, through layer after layer of floating cloud, which increases the seeming distance to an awful depth, upon the blazing shores of the Northern Sea.