inal close: six or
seven blackbirds, with a white spot betwixt the shoulders, were making a
noise, and passing to and fro on the lower branches of a tree in an
abandoned, weed-grown, orange orchard. In the long grass underneath the
tree, apparently a pale green grasshopper was fluttering, as though it
had got entangled in it. When you once fancy that the thing you are
looking at is really what you take it for, the more you look at it the
more you are convinced it is so. In the present case, this was a
grasshopper beyond all doubt, and nothing more remained to be done but to
wait in patience till it had settled, in order that you might run no risk
of breaking its legs in attempting to lay hold of it while it was
fluttering--it still kept fluttering; and having quietly approached it,
intended to make sure of it--behold, the head of a large rattlesnake
appeared in the grass close by: an instantaneous spring backwards
prevented fatal consequences. What had been taken for a grasshopper was,
in fact, the elevated rattle of the snake in the act of announcing that
he was quite prepared, though unwilling, to make a sure and deadly
spring. He shortly after passed slowly from under the orange-tree to the
neighbouring wood on the side of a hill: as he moved over a place bare of
grass and weeds, he appeared to be about eight feet long; it was he who
had engaged the attention of the birds, and made them heedless of danger
from another quarter: they flew away on his retiring; one alone left his
little life in the air, destined to become a specimen, mute and
motionless, for the inspection of the curious in a far distant clime.

It was now the rainy season, the birds were moulting; fifty-eight
specimens of the handsomest of them in the neighbourhood of Pernambuco
had been collected, and it was time to proceed elsewhere. The conveyance
to the interior was by horses; and this mode, together with the heavy
rains, would expose preserved specimens to almost certain damage. The
journey to Maranham by land would take at least forty days. The route
was not wild enough to engage the attention of an explorer, or civilised
enough to afford common comforts to a traveller. By sea there were no
opportunities, except slave ships. As the transporting poor negroes from
port to port for sale pays well in Brazil, the ships' decks are crowded
with them. This would not do.

Excuse here, benevolent reader, a small tribute of gratitude to an Irish