example, and it was near midnight before I retired to rest. The number of families on the island amounts to about forty, and they are for the most part civilized Indians. On the evening of our arrival I was presented to their captain, an old man dressed in a leather hat, a pair of coarse cotton drawers, a shirt of the same material, and a pair of leather sandals on his feet, who was sitting under a _Zizyphus_ tree repairing a fishing net. From him I learned that the Indians on the island are decreasing gradually in number, and he sighed when he told me that the day was not far distant when his race would become extinct, or at least be amalgamated with the other inhabitants. Those who still remain unmixed, are short in stature and of a stout make; in disposition they appeared gentle and obliging. I observed a church in the village, but during my visit the priest was absent on the main land. On the morning of the 28th, the second since our arrival, I again took a walk over the island, and in the centre found a large tract covered with a very prickly species of _Opuntia_, covered with the Cochineal insect. I also collected several species of _Viscum_ and _Loranthus_, growing on the branches of _Mimosa_ and _Zizyphus_ trees; while the sandy shores of the south side of the island yielded me abundance of _Ehrenbergia tribuloides_, Mart., and a Lupin-like kind of _Zornia_. The morning was comparatively cool, but the day was calm and sultry, the thermometer standing at 96° in the shade. As it was again six o’clock in the evening before the breeze set in, we were once more detained. The setting in of the breeze was accompanied with a curious appearance in the atmosphere; the sun was setting in the west with a fiery redness, surrounded by a mass of red coloured clouds, while from the eastward was seen approaching an immense body of vapour; this, from the distance at which it was seen, had more the appearance of smoke issuing from some great conflagration. This body came slowly on before the wind till at last it reached us, and we could see the small vesicles of which it was composed rolling past. The wind for about five minutes was so hot that every one was glad to take shelter from it, but it soon acquired its usual refreshing coolness. On inquiring of the old captain whether such a phenomenon was often observed, he told me that it was of frequent occurrence at the beginning of the rainy season, and added, that long experience had taught him it was always the forerunner of a great storm (_hum temporal_.)