74: THE ATLANTIC. [chap. ii. 



The next morning a large party started on horseback in the 

 direction of San Domingo. We rode over some hot, flat coun- 

 try covered with a brush of Acacia and Eicinus, and at length 

 reached a ravine with a small stream running in the bottom of 

 it, the banks fairly wooded, the wood interrupted every liere 

 and there with spaces of loose stones and gravel. As we rode 

 along, we frequently heard the harsh cry of the guinea-fowl, 

 and Captain Maclear and I detached ourselves from the riding 

 party and spent most of the day stalking a flock of them. They 

 were very wary, running very quickly, and rising and taking a 

 short flight before we could get within the longest range. They 

 crouched and ran among the stones, and their speckled plumage 

 so closely resembled at a distance the lichen-speckled rocks, that 

 more than once when we had seen them moving about, and had 

 crept up within shot, thinking that we had kept our game con- 

 stantly in sight, there was nothing there but a heap of gray 

 stones. In the afternoon Captain Maclear managed to separate 

 some of the birds from the flock, and marked one for his own ; 

 he stalked it wearily along the rugged bank, and at last circum- 

 vented it, and cautiously brought up his gun. A sharp report, 

 and the fowl fell. But Maclear's conscience was not to be bur- 

 dened with the death of that beautiful, and, I may add, delicious 

 bird. At that moment a laugh of triumph rang from the other 

 side of a low ridge, and Captain ]!^ares, who, quite unconscious 

 of our presence, had been stalking another flock in the same 

 direction, ran uj) and stuffed it into his game-bag. Maclear 

 had driven his bird right up to the muzzle of jSTares's gun ! I 

 did not get a shot at a guinea-fowl either all day, but I picked 

 up a few birds, and I found the pretty king -hunter {Dacelo 

 Jagoensis) sitting tamely on the tops of the castor-oil bushes, 

 where Darwin left him forty years before. 



On the 9th of August w^e weighed anchor, and proceeded on 

 our course toward Fernando Noronha. The northern limit of 

 the equatorial current, running westward at the rate of from 



