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The mules, the mustangs, the dogs, the peons, the slippered wenches, with their coarse trailing tresses, the low roofs, the iron-barred windows, the orange-trees by the fountain, the palms hanging over the wall, the glistening cocuyos, were all strange sights to us. The sounds that rang in our ears were not more familiar. Even the voices of the men, unlike the Saxon, sounded wild and sharp.
For the first time, perhaps, Cousin Benedict comprehended that to eat was not an action indifferent or useless to life; only, he declared that he had not come to "visit" this country to walk with his hands in his pockets, and that, if Hercules prevented him from chasing the "cocuyos," and other luminous flies, Hercules would have some trouble with him.
The people of the country remark, with a simple truth of expression, that calabashes filled with cocuyos are lanterns always ready lighted. They are, in fact, only extinguished by the sickness or death of the insects, which are easily fed with a little sugar-cane.
In the hut of the poorest inhabitants of the country, fifteen cocuyos, placed in a calabash pierced with holes, afford sufficient light to search for anything during the night. To shake the calabash forcibly is all that is necessary to excite the animal to increase the intensity of the luminous discs situated on each side of its body.
As to me, during the first three days of the journey I succeeded very well in making him take this province for the Desert of Atacama, which I visited formerly. But the child claimed his caoutchoucs and his humming-birds. The mother demanded her quinquinas. The cousin was crazy to find cocuyos.
It is still early morning, fresh and dewy, and I am here in the garden. At no time of the day is the garden more beautiful than now, in the purity of the day's birth. I have described it to you at night, with the cocuyos gleaming like lamps in the green dusk of the orange-trees, or the moonlight striking the world to silver.
Weldon, lying near her, gave a last kiss to her little boy, and her tired eyes quickly closed for the night. A few moments later Hercules brought back to the camp Cousin Benedict, who had just gone off to commence a chase for pyrophores. They are "cocuyos," or luminous flies, which the stylish put in their hair, like so many living gems.
The beautiful birds the parrots, the toucans, and the trogons all go to rest at an early hour; and other winged creatures take possession of the air. Some need not fear the darkness, for their very life is light. Such are the "cocuyos", whose brilliant lamps of green and gold and flame, gleam through the aisles of the forest, until the air seems on fire.
You hear the "flap, flap" of his long wings as he dashes down among the cocuyos. You hear the hoof-stroke on the hard plain, the "crop" of the browsing steed, and the tinkling of the bit-ring, for the horses eat bridled. At intervals, a drowsy hunter mutters through his sleep, battling in dreams with some terrible foe. Thus goes the night. These are its voices. They cease as daybreak approaches.
These little creatures are brought into Havana by young Creole children and by women, for sale to the ladies, who sometimes in the evenings wear a small cage hung to the wrist containing a few of the cocuyos, and the light thus produced is nearly equal to a small candle.
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