SOMOSOMO. 23 



bread-fruit, lemons, and oranges were dotted about. 

 Almost immediately behind the house rose a small 

 hill of rich vegetable mould, covered with beautiful 

 tree-ferns, over which different kinds of convolvulus 

 blue, white and purple were hanging in natural 

 garlands. Following the gravelly beach for about a 

 hundred yards on either side of the premises, one would 

 come to a mountain stream, splashing, foaming, and 

 murmuring in its rocky bed, and offering capital accom- 

 modation for bathing.* The ground, for some miles 

 distant gently rising, passes abruptly into steeper moun- 

 tains. There was little cleared land, though the soil 

 is fertile, and there being few paths the woods were diffi- 

 cult to penetrate. 



Fortunately a person need not be on the look-out for 

 wild beasts, there are none to molest him. Snakes, 

 about four feet long, and of a light-brown colour, fre- 

 quenting trees, especially cocoa-nut palms, to feed upon 

 the insects attracted by the flowers, are the only animals 

 that now and then startle him. Perhaps another source of 

 annoyance in this earthly paradise, are the myriads of 

 flies that follow one in the woods, and keep him con- 

 stantly employed ; but as a set-off against this must be 

 put the good behaviour of the mosquitoes, which are 

 neither very numerous nor keep late hours, but leave 

 at dusk, and do not appear again till after breakfast. 

 Somosomo has, besides, the reputation of producing dy- 

 sentery, which the natives, in the belief that it was un- 



* Here a spiny fresh- water shell I discovered abounds, called, in honour 

 of Mr. Consul Pritchard, Neritina Pritchardii, Dohr., by one of our 

 rising conchologists. 



