seas of the outer roads prevent the canoes from going out, they have
answered extremely well to the speculator. The garden produces European
as well as Brazilian vegetables, in great perfection: Fruit-trees also
thrive very well.[58] In the cuts for the fishponds I observed below
the sand, a rich black earth, full of decayed vegetables, which probably
renders this apparently sandy land, so fertile. The ponds were half
covered with the white water-lily, and some other aquatic plants of the
country. The whole island abounds in gay shrubs and gaudy flowers[59],
where the humming-bird, here called the _beja flor_ or kiss-flower, with
his sapphire wings and ruby crest, hovers continually, and the painted
butterflies vie with him and his flowers in tints and beauty. The very
reptiles are beautiful here. The snake and the lizard are singularly so,
at least in colour. We found a very large rough caterpillar, each hair
or prickle of which is divided into five or six branches; the rings of
its body are scarlet, yellow, and brown; and the country people believe
that it hurts the udders of cows, and prevents their giving milk, if it
does not actually suck them. They are therefore very unpopular here,
because the whole island that is not garden-ground is pasture, and
supplies a great deal of the milk for the market of Recife.

[Note 58: All the orange and lemon tribe, papaws, cashew nuts,
melons and gourds, pomegranates, guavas, &c.]

[Note 59: The Madagascar perriwinkle is the most common, many
parasitic plants, and almost all the papilionaceous and the bell-shaped
creepers: the passion flowers also are common.]

While we were endeavouring to forget our hunger by examining the island,
and drinking cocoa-nut juice, and wondering at many an ordinary thing,
though new to young untravelled eyes, and such were those of most of the
party, our boats were taking a circuitous track, and at length at ten
o'clock landed our provisions, when we made a hearty breakfast, sitting
on a sail spread under the palm shade. The elder boys with their guns,
then accompanied Mr. Dance and the captain of a merchant vessel, who
volunteered to act as Cicerone, to shoot; and the younger ones staid
with me to collect flowers, gather vegetables, and with the assistance
of the boats' crews, to superintend the preparations for dinner. At four
o'clock the sportsmen returned, bringing red-crested woodpeckers,
finches of various hues, humming-birds, black and yell