The
Baggage Was Covered Over With Leaves, And The Men Sheltered
Themselves As They Could Till The Storm Was Over, By Which Time A
Flood Came Down The River, Which Effectually Stopped Our Further
March, Even Had We Wished To Proceed.
We then lighted fires; I
made some coffee, and my men roasted their fish and plantains,
and as soon as it was dark, we made ourselves comfortable for the
night.
Starting at six the next morning, we had three hours of the same
kind of walking, during which we crossed the river at least
thirty or forty times, the water being generally knee-deep. This
brought us to a place where the road left the stream, and here we
stopped to breakfast. We then had a long walk over the mountain,
by a tolerable path, which reached an elevation of about fifteen
hundred feet above the sea. Here I noticed one of the smallest
and most elegant tree ferns I had ever seen, the stem being
scarcely thicker than my thumb, yet reaching a height of fifteen
or twenty feet. I also caught a new butterfly of the genus
Pieris, and a magnificent female specimen of Papilio gambrisius,
of which I had hitherto only found the males, which are smaller
and very different in colour. Descending the other side of the
ridge, by a very steep path, we reached another river at a spot
which is about the centre of the island, and which was to be our
resting place for two or three days. In a couple of hour my men
had built a little sleeping-shed for me, about eight feet by
four, with a bench of split poles, they themselves occupying two
or three smaller ones, which had been put up by former
passengers.
The river here was about twenty yards wide, running over a pebbly
and sometimes a rocky bed, and bordered by steep hills with
occasionally flat swampy spots between their base and the stream.
The whole country was one dense, Unbroken, and very damp and
gloomy virgin forest. Just at our resting-place there was a
little bush-covered island in the middle of the channel, so that
the opening in the forest made by the river was wider than usual,
and allowed a few gleams of sunshine to penetrate. Here there
were several handsome butterflies flying about, the finest of
which, however, escaped me, and I never saw it again during my
stay. In the two days and a half which we remained here, I
wandered almost all day up and down the stream, searching after
butterflies, of which I got, in all, fifty or sixty specimens,
with several species quite new to me. There were many others
which I saw only once, and did not capture, causing me to regret
that there was no village in these interior valleys where I could
stay a month. In the early part of each morning I went out with
my gun in search of birds, and two of my men were out almost all
day after deer; but we were all equally unsuccessful, getting
absolutely nothing the whole time we were in the forest.
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