"I think I will ride through the woods and around the plantation. I will take my gun, as we may see some rabbits. Please come with me, Dolores."
The little girl is always ready to oblige her brother, so she sends for her own donkey, and the children start for the woods, with Ponce following close behind.
Dear little patient, long-eared donkeys! Just as slow and stupid and stubborn as other donkeys in other parts of the world. Manuel loves his Pedro, as he is called. Pedro has been his friend and companion ever since the boy was big enough to sit up straight.
Pedro is not obliged to work very hard, and is now quite willing to set off on a gentle trot.
Dolores holds a dainty little parasol over her head, but as they reach the deep shadow of the woods, she shuts it down; then in some magical way changes it into a fan, with which she brushes away the mosquitoes.
What beautiful woods these are! Cocoanut, banana, sago, and palmetto trees grow here, as well as cedar, India-rubber, guava, and many other tall and stately trees belonging to the tropics. More than five hundred different kinds of trees are found on the one island of Porto Rico, every one of them growing over fifteen feet high.
Just think of it, children! Manuel can pick lemons, oranges, bananas, limes, plantains, peaches, apricots, olives, tamarinds, and—dear me! I can't tell you how many other fruits, without stepping off the land owned by his father.
"Listen!" says Dolores to her brother, "don't you hear that grinding, buzzing noise? It sounds like some one grinding a knife. I wonder what it can be."
The children make the donkeys stop, and look all around them. No one is to be seen. Then turning their eyes up into the branches of a tree close by, they see a strange sight. It is a beetle at least six inches long. He is very busy sawing off a small branch.
"Oh, I know what that is," says Manuel. "Father has told me all about him. Some people call him a razor-grinder because he makes a noise like the grinding of a razor. He is the largest beetle in the world. So come along, Dolores, I want to shoot some pigeons."