324 A DAY IN THE WOODS OF JAMAICA. 



their beauty, their vivacity, and their minuteness. 

 The velvet-black hood, the golden back, the length- 

 ened pair of sable streamers behind, the long coral 

 beak, and, above all, the gorget of the most lus- 

 trous emerald radiance, changing to black by the 

 slightest alteration, then flashing back the gemmeous 

 light again how lovely are these ! And the beaute- 

 ous little creature is so fearlessly familiar, confident, 

 perhaps, in its locomotive powers, that we may come 

 close up to it, as it sucks, without alarming it. 



Did you mark that long solemn note ? There ! 

 another ! and another ! each just two tones below 

 its predecessor ; each sustained like the notes of a 

 psalm, clear and sweet as the sounds of a flute. There 

 sings one of the most eminent of our woodland vocal- 

 ists, the Solitaire, rarely heard except in the loneliness 

 of these high elevations. The Spanish colonists used to 

 say it chants the Miserere. So sweet, so solemn, so un- 

 earthly are the notes, recurring at measured intervals, 

 and uttered by an almost invariably invisible per- 

 former, that the mind is remarkably impressed ; and 

 it would require little tendency to superstition to in- 

 duce the belief, in a stranger who heard it for the first 

 time in these majestic solitudes, that he had heard the 

 voice of an angel. 



But evening is drawing on apace : the sun is fast 

 declining, and we must leave these charming scenes. 

 Let us begin to descend. Evening merges quickly 

 into night in these latitudes. 



The Blue and the Bald-pate Doves are flying over 



