A shower has scudded along the loftiest of the ridges and shown the deep indentings of the elevated country, by the different depths of the misty haze.—It has passed away, and the heights are now lighted by the full blaze of the uprisen sun. The clouds cast deep shadows on the mountain declivities, and the highest points of the chain pierce through the masses, rolling one upon the other, thick and accumulated. “The sea-breeze is in. It comes as no other breeze comes, and feels as no other breeze feels. At first two or three whiffles make darkened tracks on the glassy waters. Then half the sea afar off is covered with ripples. The ripples come creeping on, and the wind has reached the shore. Two minutes pass, and a line of small breakers are chasing each other on the beach. From this time the constant wind never lulls, but sweeps with ‘a steady unrelenting force from the bright east.’ “Noon. In a small stretch of marsh land, through which the river has cut two or three channels, and left several smaller meandering dykes very clear and open, with pools and little lakes shut in from the sea by sand-banks, there is a good deal of rank grass (_Digitaria stolonifera_) growing, on which the village goats congregate to feed at mid-day, that being the time when the ground is least swampy. Among the sedge and bulrushes that cover the flooded parts, at the same noon-tide hours, the _crek, crek, crek_, of the Water-rail is heard, with that kind of impatient reiterated sound, with which Guinea-fowl call to each other. This call is a summons for the birds to quit the sedges, and seek the muddy shoals and half-dry ooze, to feed. Two or three birds nearly, if not quite, as large as half grown pullets, of a dingy ash-colour, come over a low intervening wall where I am, and feed in the open yard. The country people call this bird the Mangrove-hen, from its appearance, its habits, and its haunts. It greatly resembles the dappled grey variety of the common fowl; and in the breeding season it rambles about with its callow brood, like a hen and chickens. After one of these visits, I went and traced the footmarks in the mud, and found that the Mangrove-hens had been searching for small crabs. Worms, shell-fish, insects, and crustacea are its animal food, and the seeds and shoots of aquatic plants, its vegetable. As the rank-growing herbage is necessary for its concealment, and creative wisdom has adapted it, like the rest of its tribe, by an extraordinary expansion of the foot, for walking on weedy waters, and so compressed its body that it threads with alacrity reeds and rushes; the mangrove thickets, which it commonly haunts, are those that grow in tide-waters, and at the mouths of rivers, and in neighbourhoods luxuriant in aquatic herbage. These are the prevailing thickets at Passage Fort: I therefore find every body there familiar with the Mangrove-hen. As these birds have much of the character of the _gallinaceæ_, and are able to run