It is a little disappointing to find the real source of this peculiar cry; and most people never find it, for it is exceedingly difficult to locate; whether near or far, whether high or low, one cannot be sure. It does not proceed as imagination suggested, from the spirits of the dead at variance and afflicting one another, but from a warm-bodied, innocent creature, the lemur, which lives in the heights of the trees, feeds upon insects, birds and reptiles, and seldom comes to the ground. In appearance it is somewhat like a bulky bear’s cub, but not well armed for offense or defense, and leading a precarious life among the stronger and fiercer creatures of the forest. And now it occurs to me that the _Lemures_ in Roman mythology were the spirits of those who had died in sin and who could not find rest, for whom expiatory rites were celebrated in the temple. It is generally supposed that Linnæus gave the name _lemur_ to this family of animals because of the pale and strangely ghost-like faces of some of them; but the peculiar cry of this particular kind of lemur is more sepulchral than the appearance of any of them, and might well be a reason for the name they bear. There is one other characteristic sound in the night-forest, though personally I have not heard this sound when far from the coast. It is a single monotonous note, a little like a low tone on a flute, about ten seconds in duration, and without rise or fall, a doleful sigh or sob of unending remorse. This sound, although it always seems to be distant, is even more difficult to locate than the other. It is human more than all other sounds of the forest, and yet sepulchral, and the superstitious mind is easily persuaded that it issues from the unseen world. The source of it is rather extraordinary; for according to native testimony it proceeds from a certain gigantic snail, as it slowly draws itself into and out of its shell. This theory is difficult either for white man or black man to verify; for the sound is heard only at night, and it ceases as one approaches. But the native is by no means likely to be mistaken. And now at the camp-fire a native is relating to his fellows a strange legend of the origin of this sound; a legend familiar to all the tribes of West Africa, and illustrating a rare interpretative faculty of the native mind. This is the camp-fire story: