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 
—hblue, 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, Weritina Pritchardii, Dohr., by one of our 
rising conchologists. 
