156 THE ATLANTIC. [chap. hi. 



to know almost by heart ; but they had considerable resources 

 in themselves, in the intelligent interest which they took in the 

 ever-changing appearances of nature. 



When the Challenger arrived, they were preparing for an- 

 other summer ; but the peculiar food and the want of variety 

 in it were beginning to tell upon them, for all their original 

 stores were exhausted, w^ith the exception of the Epsom -salts, 

 which was untouched, neither of them having had an hour's ill- 

 ness during their sojourn ; and they were heartily glad of the 

 chance of a passage to the Cape. 



Frederick came to the ship to see us before we left for the 

 south in December. He was then comfortably settled in a situ- 

 ation in a merchant's office in Cape Town, and Gustav was on 

 his way home to see his people before resuming the thread of 

 his roving sailor's life. 



We landed after breakfast, and proceeded to explore the strip 

 along the shore. We were anxious to have reached the plateau, 

 but the sea was breaking heavily on the weather coast, and it 

 was considered unsafe to land opposite the practicable ascent 

 in a ship's boat. The hut was built to the extreme left of the 

 strip, close to the water-fall, for the convenience of being near 

 the bountiful supply of pure fresh water yielded by the stream. 

 To the right, for about a quarter of a mile, the ground was 

 broken and uneven — an accumulation of debris from the cliff, 

 covered with a close thicket of well-grovm Pkylica arhorea 

 tangled with long grass, and the low branches of the trees over- 

 grown with moss and ferns, the most conspicuous of the lat- 

 ter the handsome Lomaria robusta, and the most abundant a 

 spreading IlymenopliyUum matted over the stones and stumps. 

 The noddy {Sterna stolida) builds loose nests of sticks and 

 leaves in the trees, and the ground and the accumulations of 

 moss and dead leaves among the fragments of rock are honey- 

 combed with the burrows of a gray petrel about the size of a 

 pigeon, of a smaller petrel, and of Prion vittatus. 



