6926 Birds, 



unless it allude to its floods, when it would be very appropriate indeed. 

 But the English name, the 'Wag Water,' expresses* exactly its winding 

 tortuous course at all times, as it threads its way through many a 

 gloomy gorge for some thirty miles from the mountains of St. Andrew's. 

 At its entrance into the valley here, it is really nothing more than a 

 lively bright little mountain stream. The lofty hill of shale, which 

 here forms the western bank, is topped by an overhanging brow of 

 red conglomerate, rendering the dense forest beneath it still more 

 gloomy. The trees grow on the steep slope, amid huge angular frag- 

 ments of the same rock, some of which have rolled into the river 

 below. Beneath these the Wag Water delights to scoop out its 

 shingle into deep holes, in whose blue-green depths the mountain 

 mullets love to lurk. This hill is succeeded by another, rounder and 

 of shale alone, towards the base of which the overseer's house is 

 built. It forms, in some sort, the head of the valley, for the rounded 

 shale hills which continue to follow widen the valley by receding 

 westwards as they diminish in height till they sink into the belt of 

 swamp 1 have before alluded to. 



" The eastern limit is formed by the spurs of a shale peak of con- 

 siderable elevation. Towards the river they terminate suddenly in 

 precipices, whose bare brown heights tower amid the trees and jungle 

 that cling about them. Their surface must constantly be renewed by 

 the crumbling of the shale, as not one of the numerous plants which 

 so readily drape and festoon such situations in the tropics seems able 

 to hold the ground. The river-shingle extends to their base, and the 

 floods doubtless greatly aid the process. These spurs, as they suc- 

 ceed each other obliquely to the river-course, fall back to the east- 

 wards, till one advancing further than the rest shuts in the view in 

 this direction. Thus from the overseer's house opens a valley about 

 two miles in length and half a mile across. The rounded shale hills 

 are covered by the coarse guinea-grass I have mentioned, now dry and 

 brown, dotted with the sombre rigid tufts which the great macaw palm 

 {Cocos fusiformis) rears on its ai'med stem ; or the hollows are choked 

 with the numerous hardy shrubs which take immediate advantage of 

 slackened cultivation to gain possession of the soil. Among these the 

 logwood {Hoematoxylon) and an Acacia or two hold a conspicuous 

 place. Guinea-grass and bush are more mingled on the steeper hills 

 to the east, but they have long been cleared of the ancient forest ; and 

 uninterrupted lines of bamboo from base to summit are the durable 



* I believe, however, that " Wag- water" is but an English corruption of Agu* alta ; 

 just as Bocagua, on the Rio Cobre, has been corrupted to " Bog-walk." — P. H. G. 



