I did not wake until the sun was reasonably high, although but few rays found their way into the curious cove, which by such a lucky chance I had hit. It was, indeed, a sort of natural corridor or aisle: rocks covered with plants and bushes forming great green walls, with tangled trees bending from side to side, and meeting and interlacing above, like a roof, while the floor was limpid water. The air within this natural alcove was of a greenish hue, and the reflection from the water the same. Great numbers of gay-coloured birds fluttered and screamed, rather than sang, amid the boughs; and on almost every projecting stone by the edge of the water stood a great grey crane or heron, watching for the small fish which form its prey. After I had looked my fill, I began to think of breakfast; for, in order to eke out my store, I had gone supperless to bed. So I munched a couple of biscuits, and took a great pull at the sweet, fresh water. There were fruits and vegetables of many kinds growing near, which I feared to meddle with, not knowing their properties. After breakfast, I cast off from my bough, and paddled to and fro in the channel to seek a landing-place. This I was not long in discovering, at the spot where a little runnel of the most transparent water I ever saw in my life came trickling down in a small hollow, or what, in Scotland, we would call a _scaur_. The sides of the ravine were, it is true, very steep, but they were clothed with matted grass and vegetation, so that I could clamber up without much difficulty. I therefore made my boat fast very carefully, for I knew not what use she might be to me afterwards, and also loaded my gun and hammered the flint, after which I addressed myself to climb to the top of the bank. I found this tolerably hard work; the heat of the sun was excessive, and here there was no sea-breeze to refresh one. Moreover, I did not much like the infinity of creeping and crawling things which, as I made my way upwards, I startled amid the coarse grass and underwood. Great beetles, shining and speckled—writhing creatures, like grey worms, with numberless legs—horrible hairy spiders—and one or two small snakes, all mottled and brindled. Besides, there flew about me, making a tiny buzz, as if they blew small hairy trumpets, hosts of that accursed fly called by the French maranguinnes, and by the English mosquitos, which stung me until I was almost mad,—slapping my face and my hands, and thrashing the air with a leafy branch, but all in vain. At length, after great toil, I stood upon the top of the bank, and felt, to my joy, the cool blast of the strong sea-breeze, which rustled in the bushes, and soon blew away my insect enemies far to leeward. Then, mounting a moderate-sized eminence, I set myself to reconnoitre; and truly I might have deemed that I was in a desert and unpeopled land. Behind me rose great swelling ridges, extending above one another as far as my eye could reach, and all covered