FIFTH DAY. 89 



variety, while the extent of the view gave it a very imposing 

 character. 



The road continued to run between miserable acacias 

 intended to form an avenue, and all sorts of birds utilized 

 these solitary elevated points as perches. I had taken my 

 gun with me in the carriage, and while driving along my 

 brother-in-law and I killed, in the first two hours, four 

 Kestrels, one Corn-Bunting, and four splendid Rollers. The 

 incredible tameness of all these birds was most remarkable, 

 for we stopped the carriage within a few yards of them, and 

 shot them sitting. After a very long drive we reached the 

 above-mentioned chain of heights, which forms a singularly 

 long narrow ridge sloping abruptly on both sides. Where 

 these declivities were not mere perpendicular walls of earth 

 they were planted with vines, while some villages, and many 

 orchards in full bloom, formed the only other ornaments of 

 this barren line of hills. 



Our road led us pretty steeply up one side of this ridge 

 and rather more gently down the other, running all the time 

 through the broad street of a large but. truly wretched village, 

 and at the base of the northern slope it passed along an 

 embankment bordered on both sides by extensive marshes, 

 which at one place reached up to the houses. To our great 

 astonishment we here noticed some women washing clothes 

 in the loathsome stinking marsh- water, attired in a somewhat 

 Adamitic simplicity of costume, and quite oblivious even of 

 such childish ideas of decency as generally prevail in these 

 districts. 



Marsh, Hen, and Montagu's Harriers were skimming over 

 the swamps, great numbers of Rooks, Hooded Crows, and 

 Jackdaws were nesting in the high elms along the roadside, 

 and we here shot three Hooded Crows and one Jackdaw from 

 the carriage. 



A beautiful plain now opened to our view, which was 



