416 



A NATUHALIST^S wandesznos 



Early on the following mommg, therefore, on horses kindly 

 proviiled by the Government Secretary, Mr, Ben to da Franca, 

 and accompanied by Senhor Albino — one of the most genial 

 spirits and most influential oflicials in Billy, who in his own 

 person was Master of the Port, Director of Public Works, and 

 Colonel of the native troops— we rwle up the hiJla in qnest of a 

 location. A damp mist hung about the town as we started, 

 but when we had ridden a few miles southward and ascended 

 some 300 feet, the sun rose and displayed before us a land- 

 seajH3 whose great beauty I was utterly unprepared for, dis- 

 heartened somewhat as I was by the hot sandy town and the 

 depressing effect of the fever-stricken condition of the 

 Europeans. Before we had reached 500 feet above the sea, I 

 felt as if in a new atmosphere, so fresh and exhilirating was 

 the air. Kow winding round the llanka of deep glens, the 

 watercourses dug out by the min (for there was neither ]Mth 

 nor road otherwise), now ascending slopes so steep as to make 

 it impossible to sit on horseback without clutching grimly 

 to the mane, now by the edge of sheer precipices, the path 

 brought us, at 1700 feet, to a coffee-garden whose shrubs 

 growing under deep shade, exhibited the richest display of 

 fragrant blossom that I have ever seen. Close by on a pro- 

 jecting shoulder, over which the summit of the monutain rose 

 1000 feet higher, was a grassy plateau of a few yards in w idth 

 commanding a view of unexampled beauty, and convenient to 

 a quiet nook, where under the shade of a grove of Kanary 

 trees a sparkling stream fell with a noisy purl over a rocky 

 projection into a shallow pool, A few feet in front of the 

 plateau the ground dropped suddenly into the wooded sides of 

 a precipitous valley, widening out as it descended, till its 

 enclosing spurs broke off abruptly in the green seaward phiin, 

 beyond which the white spire of the church, the Governor's 

 Palace, the grey dwellings of the natives, and tLe gnard-sbip 

 lying in the bay, glinted through the palms. Due nortli full 

 in our face, rose abruptly out of the sea the high blue peaks of 

 Pulo Kambing, whUe half hidden by the arms of the valley 

 down which our view extended, on the left the lofty eastern 

 buttresses of Allor, and on the right the serrated ridges of 

 Wetter, touched the sky, boundaries within which the blue 

 sea lay calm as an iiduiid lake. No second thoughts were 



