e
of a large cheese, with a shallow depression on the top, in which
the eggs are laid. A list of the seeds found in the stomachs of
Guacharos by my friend Mr. Prestoe of the Botanical Gardens, Port of
Spain, will be found in an Appendix.

We rowed away, toward our island paradise. But instead of going
straight home, we turned into a deep cove called Ance Maurice--all
coves in the French islands are called Ances--where was something to
be seen, and not to be forgotten again. We grated in, over a
shallow bottom of pebbles interspersed with gray lumps of coral
pulp, and of Botrylli, azure, crimson, and all the hues of the
flower-garden; and landed on the bank of a mangrove swamp, bored
everywhere with the holes of land-crabs. One glance showed how
these swamps are formed: by that want of tide which is the curse of
the West Indies.

At every valley mouth the beating of the waves tends all the year
round to throw up a bank of sand and shingle, damming the land-water
back to form a lagoon. This might indeed empty itself during the
floods of the rainy season; but during the dry season it must remain
a stagnant pond, filling gradually with festering vegetable matter
from the hills, beer-coloured, and as hideous to look at as it is to
smell. Were there a tide, as in England, of from ten to twenty
feet, that swamp would be drained twice a day to nearly that depth;
and healthy vegetation, as in England, establish itself down to the
very beach. A tide of a foot or eighteen inches only, as is too
common in the West Indies, will only drain the swamp to that depth;
and probably, if there be any strong pebble-bearing surf outside,
not at all. So there it all lies, festering in the sun, and cooking
poison day and night; while the mangroves and graceful white roseaux
{115a} (tall canes) kindly do their best to lessen the mischief, by
rooting in the slush, and absorbing the poison with their leaves. A
white man, sleeping one night on the edge of that pestilential
little triangle, half an acre in size, would be in danger of
catching a fever and ague, which would make a weaker man of him for
the rest of his life. And yet so thoroughly fitted for the climate
is the Negro, that not ten yards from the edge of the mud stood a
comfortable negro-house, with stout healthy folk therein, evidently
well to do in the world, to judge from the poultry, and the fruit-
trees and provision-ground which stret