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 drops suddenly and mutely, diving into concealment among the long grass, as if ashamed of his pitiful attempt.  For the pert, frisky robin, pattering and pecking against the windows in the dull days of winter, we have the lively “superb warbler,” with his blue shining plumage and his long tapering tail, picking up the crumbs at our doors; while the pretty little redbills, of the size and form of the goldfinch, constitute the sparrow of our clime, flying in flocks about our houses, and building their soft downy pigmy nests in the orange, peach, and lemon trees