after I had gone to bed, the Reverend came into my room carrying
something, and asked, "Is this your boot?" I said it was, and he said he
had met a spider going off with it. Next morning he stated that just at
dawn the same spider raised his window and was coming in to get a shirt,
but saw him and fled.

I inquired, "Did he get the shirt?"

"No."

"How did you know it was a shirt he was after?"

"I could see it in his eye."

We inquired around, but could hear of no Bermudian spider capable of
doing these things. Citizens said that their largest spiders could not
more than spread their legs over an ordinary saucer, and that they had
always been considered honest. Here was testimony of a clergyman against
the testimony of mere worldlings--interested ones, too. On the whole, I
judged it best to lock up my things.

Here and there on the country roads we found lemon, papaw, orange, lime,
and fig trees; also several sorts of palms, among them the cocoa, the
date, and the palmetto. We saw some bamboos forty feet high, with stems
as thick as a man's arm. Jungles of the mangrove tree stood up out of
swamps; propped on their interlacing roots as upon a tangle of stilts.
In drier places the noble tamarind sent down its grateful cloud of shade.
Here and there the blossomy tamarisk adorned the roadside. There was a
curious gnarled and twisted black tree, without a single leaf on it.
It might have passed itself off for a dead apple tree but for the fact