A BOBN KING. 191 



recollect, a gold-green Jacamar sat on a log and looked at 

 me, till I was within five yards of her. At another, w^e 

 heard the screams of Parrots ; at another the double note 

 of the Toucan ; at another the metallic clank of the Bell- 

 bird, or what was said to "be the Bell-bird. But this note was 

 not that solemn and sonorous toll of the Campanese of the 

 mainland which is described by Waterton and others. It 

 resembled rather the less poetical sound of a woman beating 

 a saucepan to make a swarm of bees settle. 



At one point we met a gang of Xegros felling timber to 

 widen the road. Fresh fallen trees, tied together with lianes, 

 lay everywhere. What a harvest for the botanist w^as among 

 them ! I longed to slay there a week to examine and collect. 

 But time pressed ; and, indeed, collecting plants in tlie wet 

 season is a difficult and disappointing work. In an air 

 saturated with moisture specimens turn black and mouldy, 

 and drop to pieces ; and unless turned over and exposed to 

 every chance burst of sunshine, the labour of wrecks is lost, 

 if indeed meanwhile the ants, and other creeping things, 

 have not eaten the whole into rags. 



Among these Xegros was one who excited my astonish- 

 ment; not merely for his size, though he was perhaps the 

 tallest man whom I saw anions- the usuallv tall Nefrros of 

 Trinidad ; Itut for his features, which were altogether European 

 of the highest type ; the forehead high and broad, the cheek- 



