164 
SOMERSET 
CHAP. 
coloured flowers of a shade that I had not seen before. 
I have added considerably here to my collection of 
flowers and sketches, but I find it no easy task keeping 
pace with the former as they are brought to me, and 
the heat at times makes it very hard to work, for you 
live in a perpetual state of Turkish bath. 
There are Straits pigeons here in thousands. They 
wheel overhead sometimes in a black cloud, and along the 
shore there is a constant cawing and chattering of count- 
less sea-birds, which are hatching their eggs. On one 
small promontory we had to pick our way through the 
nests, and the noise as the birds rose overhead was quite 
deafening. We had had a good scramble. The others 
went home while Mr. Bruce and I walked to the highest 
point of the island, 800 or 900 feet high, where we got 
a splendid view of the whole of its outline, and, away 
in the distance, saw the breakers here and there on the 
great Barrier Reef ; and was not I tired and hot when I 
got to the top ! It was getting dark, and I came down 
with a series of jumps, a black man holding tight on to 
my arm all the time in case I fell ; the more I tried to 
shake him off, the more determinedly Mr. Bruce, in his 
native language, told him to hold on. 
After tea, I went off again along the beach by moon- 
light, alone with a little black girl (this sounds rather 
Irish). We were afterwards joined by two not over 
pleasant-looking men. Visions of five graves I had 
seen, where, over the bones of white men, one may read 
the ominous words, “ Killed and eaten by the natives of 
the island,” rose up before me, and I suddenly had 
a longing to return. Poor things ! I daresay my 
two friends were entertaining me to the best of their 
ability ; they gesticulated wildly and grew very ex- 
cited over something ; but a walk under these condi- 
tions becomes monotonous when one can understand 
