ST. JAGO—CAPE DE VERD ISLANDS 



Teneriffe, whilst the low^er parts were veiled in fleecy clouds. 

 This was the first of many delightful days never to be forgotten. 

 On the 1 6th of January 1832 we anchored at Porto Praya, in 

 St. J ago, the chief island of the Cape de Verd archipelago. 



The neighbourhood of Porto Praya, viewed from the sea, 

 wears a desolate aspect. The volcanic fires of a past age, and 

 the scorching heat of a tropical sun, have in most places 

 rendered the soil unfit for vegetation. The country rises in 

 successive steps of table-land, interspersed with some truncate 

 conical hills, and the horizon is bounded by an irregular chain 

 of more lofty mountains. The scene, as beheld through the 

 hazy atmosphere of this climate, is one of great interest ; if, 

 indeed, a person, fresh from sea, and who 'has just walked, for 

 the first time, in a grove of cocoa-nut trees, can be a judge of 

 anything but his own happiness. The island would generally 

 be considered as very uninteresting ; but to any one accustomed 

 only to an English landscape, the novel aspect of an utterly 

 sterile land possesses a grandeur which more vegetation might 

 spoil. A single green leaf can scarcely be discovered over 

 wide tracts of the lava plains ; yet flocks of goats, together 

 with a few cows, contrive to exist. It rains very seldom, but 

 during a short portion of the year heavy torrents fall, and 

 immediately afterwards a light vegetation springs out of every 

 crevice. This soon withers ; and upon such naturally formed 

 hay the animals live. It had not now rained for an entire 

 year. When the island was discovered, the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of Porto Praya was clothed with trees,^ the reckless 

 destruction of which has caused here, as at St. Helena, and at 

 some of the Canary Islands, almost entire sterility. The broad, 

 flat-bottomed valleys, many of which serve during a {qw days 

 only in the season as watercourses, are clothed with thickets of 

 leafless bushes. Few living creatures inhabit these valleys. 

 The commonest bird is a kingfisher (Dacelo lagoensis), which 

 tamely sits on the branches of the castor-oil plant, and thence 

 darts on grasshoppers and lizards. It is brightly coloured, but 

 not so beautiful as the European species : in its flight, manners, 

 and place of habitation, which is generally in the driest valley, 

 there is also a wide difference. 



1 I state this on the authority of Dr. E. Dieffenbach, in his Clerman translation 

 of the first edition of this Journah 



