148 A NATURALIST ON DESEUT ISLANDS. 



knolls, or nestling snugly in the folds of sheltered little 

 dells, appeared small isolated coppices or very circum- 

 scribed woods of vivid green. From this distance, it 

 might all have passed for a little bit of Devonshire. The 

 land sloped gently up from the shore, undulating or 

 carved out into ridge and gully, tiU it gained a central 

 plateau dotted with more clumps of low trees and bushes 

 and thinly covered with grass. Now and again, huge piles 

 of fantastic and weather-worn blocks of granite, smooth 

 and massive, crowned the softly moulded slopes of some 

 low hill, like the ruins of a mediaeval village. They 

 reminded us, in fact, of the villages, or ruined castles, 

 one so often sees perched on the tops of hills in the Riviera, 



This savanna-like appearance of the island was quite 

 unexpected; and its homely and untropical aspect was 

 enhanced by seeing what we thought to be herds of cattle 

 grazing here and there upon its slopes. As we drew in 

 closer still, our cattle turned out to be donkeys and goats ; 

 and later on we discovered, to our cost, that distance gave 

 a somewhat flattering and softened tone to a scene, 

 which a profusion of cactus, growing everywhere all over 

 the island, quickly did its best to dispel on a nearer 

 acquaintance. Thick and impenetrable, however, as 

 the cactus scrub proved in places to be, where it easily 

 held its own, there were still large areas of country where 

 one could wander and even ride freely and at ease, nay, 

 some where, with a little effort of the imagination, one 

 could almost call the thinly growing grass " turf." 



Blanquilla has, indeed, what one may be excused for 

 calling a "golfy" appearance; and as one wandered later 

 over its broad open stretches, the thought of this alluring 

 game recurred constantly to the mind. It is along its 

 southern and western sides that the nature of the ground 

 gives one this impression ; and here, in the intervals of 

 looking for birds, we found ourselves unconsciously 

 choosing ideal ''holes," and making sporting "approaches ;" 

 or gazing curiously at the strange cyclopean piles of rock 

 which crowned many of the eminences, like so many 



