ses the chief sustenance of the natives, having the watery
look and taste of the yam. Of foreign fruits now climatized we possess a
great variety. Here are oranges, lemons, citrons, nectarines, apricots,
peaches, plums, cherries, figs, loquats, grenadillos, quinces, pears,
apples, mulberries, pomegranates, grapes, olives, raspberries,
strawberries, bananas, guavas, pineapples, and English and Cape
gooseberries and currants. Of shell-fruits we have the almond, walnut,
chestnut, and filbert; and of other garden fruits, strawberries, melons,
peppers, &c.

Melons and pumpkins will absolutely overrun you, if you do not give them
most bounteous scope, and you need want neither water nor musk-melons
for six or eight months yearly on an average, if you duly time the
sowings. Nothing can exceed their rich juiciness and flavour, and the
rapidity of their growth is almost miraculous, when a few showers of
rain temper the hot days. The pumpkin makes an excellent substitute for
the apple in a pie, when soured and sweetened to a proper temper by
lemons and sugar. The black children absolutely dance and scream when
they see one, pumpkin and sugar being their delight. To the half of a
shrivelled pumpkin hanging at the door of my tent on my first essay in
settling, one of our sooty satyrs could do nothing for some minutes but
fidget and skip; and with his eyes sparkling, and countenance beaming
with ecstacy, exclaim, "Dam my eye, _pambucan_; dam my eye, _pambucan_!"
such being the nearest point they can attain to the right pronunciation
of their favourite _fruit_.

_Birds_.--We are not moved here with the deep mellow note of the
blackbird, poured out from beneath some low stunted bush; nor thrilled
with the wild warblings of the thrush, perched on the top of some tall
sapling; nor charmed with the blithe carol of the lark as we proceed
early afield; none of our birds at all rivalling these divine songsters
in realising the poetical idea of the "music of the grove;" while
"parrots' chattering" must supply the place of "nightingales' singing"
in the future amorous lays of our sighing Celadons. We have our lark
certainly, but both his appearance and note are a most wretched parody
upon the bird our English poets have made so many fine similes about.
He will mount from the ground, and rise fluttering upward in the same
manner, and with a few of the starting notes of the English lark; but
on reaching the height of thirty feet or so, down he