FIFTH DAY. 89 
variety, while the extent of the view gave it a very imposing 
character. 
The road continued to run between miserable acacias 
intended to form an avenue, and all sorts of birds utilized 
these solitary elevated points as perches. I had taken my 
gun with me in the carriage, and while driving along my 
brother-in-law and I killed, in the first two hours, four 
Kestrels, one Corn-Bunting, and four splendid Rollers. The 
incredible tameness of all these birds was most remarkable, 
for we stopped the carriage within a few yards of them, and 
shot them sitting. After a very long drive we reached the 
above-mentioned chain of heights, which forms a singularly 
long narrow ridge sloping abruptly on both sides. Where 
these declivities were not mere perpendicular walls of earth 
they were planted with vines, while some villages, and many 
orchards in full bloom, formed the only other ornaments of 
this barren line of hills. 
Our road led us pretty steeply up one side of this ridge 
and rather more gently down the other, ‘running all the time 
through the broad street of a large but truly wretched village, 
and at the base of the northern slope it passed along an 
embankment bordered on both sides by extensive marshes, 
which at one place reached up to the houses. To our great 
astonishment we here noticed some women washing clothes 
in the loathsome stinking marsh-water, attired in a somewhat 
Adamitic simplicity of costume, and quite oblivious even of 
such childish ideas of decency as generally prevail in these 
districts. 
Marsh, Hen, and Montagu’s Harriers were skimming over 
the swamps, great numbers of Rooks, Hooded Crows, and 
Jackdaws were nesting in the high elms along the roadside, 
and we here shot three Hooded Crows and one Jackdaw from 
the carriage. 
A beautiful plain now opened to our view, which was 
