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Then the cocuyo takes up the activity of insect life, flashing its miniature torches over the plantations, and peeping out from among the dense foliage, while the stars sing their evening hymn of silent praise. The Cubans have a peculiar mode of harnessing their oxen, similar to that seen in the far East and also in some parts of Europe, as at San Sebastian, on the Bay of Biscay.
About the coffee plantations, and indeed throughout the rural portions of the country, there is a curious little insect called a cocuyo, answering in its general characteristics and nature to our firefly, though it is quadruple its size, and far the most brilliant insect of its kind known to naturalists.
The cocuyo lights your way through the dark aisles, and the nightingale cheers you with his varied and mimic song. A thousand sights and sounds, that seem to be possessed of some mysterious and narcotic power, lull you into silence and sleep a sleep whose dream is love. Clayey and I felt this as we rode silently along. Even the ruder hearts of our companions seemed touched by the same influence.
I took the cocuyo in my hand, the green, golden fire flashing from its great round eyes. I held it up before the writing, but the faint glimmer was scarcely discernible upon the paper. "Why, it would require a dozen of these to make sufficient light," I said to the guide. It produced a brilliant light, radiating over a circle of several inches in diameter!
Inside I found a cocuyo; and, using it as I had been already instructed, I read: "The walls are adobe. You have a knife. The side with the loop-hole fronts outward. There is a field of magueys, and beyond this you will find the forest. You may then trust to yourselves. I can help you no farther. Carissimo caballero, adios!"
Every point in the writing was plainly visible. "See, Clayley!" cried I, admiring this lamp of Nature's own making. "Never trust the tales of travellers. I have heard that half a dozen of these insects in a glass vessel would enable you to read the smallest type. Is that true?" added I, repeating what I had said in Spanish. "And yet with a single cocuyo you may.
On the plantations, when a fresh supply is desired, one has only to wait until evening, when hundreds can be secured with a thread net at the end of a pole. By holding a cocuyo up in the out-door air for a few moments, large numbers are at once attracted to the spot. In size they are about an inch long, and a little over an eighth of an inch in breadth.
It was the cocuyo the great firefly of the tropics. With a low, humming sound it came glistening along at the height of seven or eight feet from the ground. The man sprang up, and with a sweep of his arm jerked it suddenly to the earth. Then, covering it with his hat, and inverting his hand, he caught the gleaming insect, and presented it to me with the ejaculation: "Ya!"
"And, were I a painter, I could throw her features upon the canvas as truly as if they were before me. I see her face outlined upon these broad leaves her dark eyes burning in the flash of the cocuyo her long black hair drooping from the feathery fringes of the palm and her " "Stop! You are dreaming, Captain! Her eyes are not dark her hair is not black." "What!
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