56 VOYAGES OF A NATURALIST 



at right-angles to the stem. The tree-ferns on 

 South Trinidad grow very close together, and 

 owing to this fact and to the ground being strewn 

 with boulders of all sizes, over which the grass 

 had sprung up in great luxuriance, walking through 

 a forest of these ferns was a tedious business. 



Every now and again I was thrown into a state 

 of excitement on hearing a shrill twittering sound 

 just above my head. Visions of a land-bird were 

 always in my mind, but time after time I was 

 disappointed to find that the twitterings were 

 caused by white terns which were nesting on the 

 tops of the decaying trunks of dead tree-ferns. 

 Finally we came to the reluctant conclusion that 

 there is no land-bird of any kind on South 

 Trinidad. We had carefully searched the tallest 

 trees on the summit, and there, as in the tree- 

 ferns, we found no signs of such a bird. 



On the trunk of one of the tree-ferns, Mr. Meade- 

 Waldo found an orchid, which he sent home to 

 England, but apart from this and the bean there 

 was no other plant in this valley which we had 

 not found in that of the " Cascade." 



Instead of taking us down to the shore, as we 

 had fully expected, we found that the valley was 

 a mere cul-de-sac, and ended with a steep 

 precipice of several hundreds of feet in height. 



It was by this time nearly four o'clock in the 

 afternoon, and we had arranged to be at the 

 landing place at five, and here we were nearly 

 two thousand feet above the sea, and the yacht 



