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Our quarters were at the Veracruzana, where we occupied a great whitewashed room. A large grated window opened into the garden, where the armadillo was fastened to a tree by a long string, and had soon dug a deep hole with his powerful fore-claws, as the manner of the creature is.
It succeeded by means of a corner or an accidental crevice in climbing a foot upwards, and fell down again immediately, because it had abandoned the comparatively secure footing of its hinder limbs before its fore-claws had obtained a firm hold. It received no hurt, as the violence of the fall was broken by the flying membrane which was rapidly extended.
Before it had reached the first fork, however, we observed that it climbed more slowly then faltered then stopped altogether. Its hind feet slipped from the bark; its body oscillated a moment, hanging by the fore-claws, and then dropped heavily back into the very jaws of the serpent!
I am the victim of self-incense. I hear the demons shouting their chorus "Here comes Monk Gregory, who called himself Conqueror of Darkness!" In the camp I am discredited and a scoff; in the city I am spat upon, abhorred. Satan, my son, fights not with his fore-claws. 'Tis with his tail he fights, O Farina!
A favourite trick, indulged in by young and old alike, was that of raising themselves on their hind-legs close beside a broad beech-trunk near the "set," and then, on tiptoe, stretching out their fore-claws to the fullest extent and scratching vigorously at the bark.
An attempt being made to force his coil, he sticks his fore-claws into the scales of his head, and holds on with a death-like grip. His scaly armor will turn a musket-ball. After many days of calm or light winds, a stiff and fair breeze, for twenty-four hours past, has been driving us rapidly on our course. We hope to see St. Thomas to-morrow.
While he was wandering about, an awful roar was heard resounding through the passages of the mountain, and soon there came flapping along an enormous dragon, with body black as night, and wings and tail of fiery red. In his great fore-claws he bore a little baby. "Horrible!" exclaimed the Bee-man. "He is taking that little creature to his cave to devour it."
The fore-claws of this tiger are the lacerating pinnacles of the Corbiere and the impaling rocks of Portelet Bay and Noirmont; the hind-claws are the devastating diorite reefs of La Motte and the Banc des Violets. The head and neck, terrible and beautiful, are stretched out towards the west, as it were to scan the wild waste and jungle of the Atlantic seas.
His long head and shoulders projected from the water as he attempted to fix his fore-claws into the putrid flesh; this, however, rolled over towards him, and prevented him from getting a hold; but the gaping jaws nevertheless made a wide breach in the buffalo's flank. I was now within thirty yards of them, and, being observed, they all dived immediately to the bottom.
The males were tolerably good and were known by the smallness of their two fore-claws or feeders. We saw the trunk of a dead tree on which had been cut A.D. 1773. The figures were very distinct; even the slips made with the knife were discernible. This must have been done by some of captain Furneaux's people in March 1773, fifteen years before.
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