WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 315 



remember which. Had queen Bess weighed well in her own 

 mind the probable consequences of this lamentable traffic, 

 it is likely she would not have been owner of two vessels 

 in Sir John Hawkins's squadron, which committed the 

 first robbery in negro flesh on the coast of Africa. As 

 philanthropy is the very life and soul of this momentous 

 question on slavery, which is certainly fraught with great 

 difficulties and danger, perhaps it would be as well at 

 present for the nation to turn its thoughts to poor ill-fated 

 Ireland, where oppression, poverty, and rags make a heart- 

 rending appeal to the feelings of the benevolent. 



But to proceed. There was another thing which added 

 to the dulness of Barbadoes, and which seemed to have 

 considerable effect in keeping away strangers from the 

 island. The legislature had passed a most extraordinary 

 bill, by virtue of which every person who arrives at 

 Barbadoes is obliged to pay two dollars, and two dollars 

 more on his departure from it. It is called the alien bill ; 

 and every Barbadian who leaves or returns to the island, 

 and every Englishman too, pays the tax ! 



rinding no vessel here for Trinidad, I embarked in 

 a schooner for Demerara, landed there after being nearly 

 stranded on a sand-bank, and proceeded without loss of 

 time to the forests in the interior. It was the dry 

 season, which renders a residence in the woods very 

 delightful. 



There are three species of Jacamar to be found on the 

 different sand-hiUs and dry savannas of Demerara; but 

 there is another much larger and far more beautiful to be 

 seen when you arrive in that part of the country where 

 there are rocks. The jacamar has no affinity to the wood- 

 pecker or kingfisher, (notwithstanding what travellers 

 affirm,) either in its haunts or anatomy. The jacamar 

 lives entirely on insects, but never goes in search of them. 



