2 
ST. JAGO—CAPE DE VERB ISLANDS 
CHAP. 
Teneriffe, whilst the lower parts were veiled in fleecy clouds. 
This was the first of many delightful days never to be forgotten. 
On the 16th of January 1832 we anchored at Porto Praya, in 
St. Jago, the chief island of the Cape de Verd archipelago. 
The neighbourhood of Porto Praya, viewed from the sea, 
wears a desolate aspect. The volcanic fires of a past age, and 
the scorching heat of a tropical sun, have in most places 
rendered the soil unfit for vegetation. The country rises in 
successive steps of table-land, interspersed with some truncate 
conical hills, and the horizon is bounded by an irregular chain 
of more lofty mountains. The scene, as beheld through the 
hazy atmosphere of this climate, is one of great interest; if, 
indeed, a person, fresh from sea, and who has just walked, for 
the first time, in a grove of cocoa-nut trees, can be a judge of 
anything but his own happiness. The island would generally 
be considered as very uninteresting ; but to any one accustomed 
only to an English landscape, the novel aspect of an utterly 
sterile land possesses a grandeur which more vegetation might 
spoil. A single green leaf can scarcely be discovered over 
wide tracts of the lava plains ; yet flocks of goats, together 
with a .few cows, contrive to exist. It rains very seldom, but 
during a short portion of the year heavy torrents fall, and 
immediately afterwards a light vegetation springs out of every 
crevice. This soon withers ; and upon such naturally formed 
hay the animals live. It had not now rained for an entire 
year. When the island was discovered, the immediate neigh¬ 
bourhood of Porto Praya was clothed with trees, 1 the reckless 
destruction of which has caused here, as at St. Helena, and at 
some of the Canary Islands, almost entire sterility. The broad, 
flat-bottomed valleys, many of which serve during a few days 
only in the season as watercourses, are clothed with thickets of 
leafless bushes. Few living creatures inhabit these valleys. 
The commonest bird is a kingfisher (Dacelo Iagoensis), which 
tamely sits on the branches of the castor-oil plant, and thence 
darts on grasshoppers and lizards. It is brightly coloured, but 
not so beautiful as the European species : in its flight, manners, 
and place of habitation, which is generally in the driest valley, 
there is also a wide difference. 
1 I state this on the authority of Dr. E. Dieffenbach, in his German translation 
of the first edition of this Journal. 
