two bold wooded islands, called Father and
Mother; and near them are others, their children, smaller, though
beautiful as their parents.

All along the coast are seen innumerable quantities of snow-white
egrets, scarlet curlews, spoonbills, and flamingoes. About a day's
journey in the interior is the celebrated national plantation called La
Gabrielle, with which no other plantation in the western world can vie.
In it are 22,000 clove-trees in full bearing. The black pepper, the
cinnamon, and the nutmeg are also in great abundance here.

Not far from the banks of the river Oyapoc, to windward of Cayenne, is a
mountain which contains an immense cavern. Here the Cock of the Rock is
plentiful. He is about the size of a fantail pigeon, his colour a bright
orange and his wings and tail appear as though fringed; his head is
adorned with a superb double-feathery crest, edged with purple.

Finding that a beat to the Amazons would be long and tedious, and aware
that the season for procuring birds in fine plumage had already set in,
I left Cayenne for Paramaribo, went through the interior to Coryntin,
stopped a few days in New Amsterdam, and proceeded to Demerara.

Though least in size, the glittering mantle of the humming-bird entitles
it to the first place in the list of the birds of the New World. See it
darting through the air almost as quick as thought. Now it is within a
yard of your face, and then is in an instant gone. Now it flutters from
flower to flower. Now it is a ruby, now a topaz, now an emerald, now all
burnished gold.

Cayenne and Demerara produce the same humming-birds. On entering the
forests the blue and green, the smallest brown, no bigger than the
humble bee, with two long feathers in the tail, and the little
forked-tail purple-throated humming-birds glitter before you in
ever-changing attitudes.

There are three species of toucans in Dememara, and three diminutives,
which may be called toucanets. The singular form of these birds makes a
lasting impression on the memory. Every species of this family of
enormous bill lays its eggs in the hollow trees. You will be at a loss
to know for what ends nature has overloaded the head of this bird with
such an enormous bill. It is impossible to conjecture.

You would not be long in the forests of Demerara without noticing the
woodpeckers. The sound which the largest kind makes in hammering against
the bark of the tree is so loud that you would never suppose it to