TO CAPE FllIO. 



39 



• of a reddish brown colour, hooted among the bushes ; luminous insects 

 glistened on the marshes ; and the frogs gently croaked around us. The 

 next morning afforded me, for the first time in my life, the pleasure of 

 one of those excursions which I had hitherto known only by the in- 

 teresting description of Le Vaillant. Our blankets and baggage were 

 wet through by the dew ; but the early beams of the sun soon dried 

 them. After breakfast each took his gun, and well provided with 

 ammunition, proceeded to explore the beautiful adjacent country. 

 The groves were animated by numbers of birds just commencing their 

 early songs. If our ears were charmed on one side by the most 

 melodious notes of some, our attention was attracted in an opposite 

 direction by the gaudy and shining plumage of others. I soon shot 

 a water-hen, and several kinds of taiigara of the finest plumage, and a 

 humming-bird of exquisite beauty. The sun became more oppressive, 

 and I returned to our resting-place. Each hunter then produced what 

 he had killed. Mr. Freyreiss, besides other birds, brought the superb 

 blue nectarinea cyanea. 



Our attendants now loaded the mules. Though the animals were 

 not yet quite broke in, and sometimes threw off their burdens, they 

 however gradually went on better. The road lay between mountains, 

 whose fine vegetation excited great admiration : plantations of man- 

 diocca, sugar-cane, and orange trees, which here form grop es round 

 the habitations, alternate with little marshy spots. Thick clumps of 

 bananas, mammon trees, and tall slender cocoa-palms, adorn the de- 

 tached dwellings, while various and many-coloured flowers blossomed 

 under low bushes ; among others the erytlirina, of a deep scarlet, with 

 its long tubulous blossoms, and a beautiful trumpet flower, to which 

 Mr. Sellow gave the name of coridceo, was adorned with large flowers 

 of a delicate yellow. Above these shrubs rose the cactus, agave 

 foetida, and lofty bushes of a fan-like reed. The Indian reed, bearing 

 a fine red flower, grows along the road, sometimes ten or twelve feet 



