2 ST. JAGO CAPE DE VERD ISLANDS. 



a tropical sun, have in most places rendered the 

 soil unfit for vegetation. The country rises in suc- 

 cessive steps of table-land, interspersed with some 

 truncate conical hills, and the horizon is bounded 

 by an iiTegular 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 walk- 

 ed, 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 utter- 

 ly sterile land possesses a gi'andeur which more 

 vegetation might spoil. A single green leaf can 

 scai'celybe 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 toiTents 

 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 

 neighbourhood 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 

 few days only in the season as watercourses, are 

 clothed with thickets of leafless bushes. Few liv- 

 ing creatures inhabit these valleys. The common- 

 est 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 



* I state this on the authority of Dr. E. Dieffenbach, in his 

 German translation of the first edition of this Journal. 



