In the river, opposite this little town of Yakasgo, is a small verdant island, but uncultivated, perhaps owing to the inundations during the rainy season. Another village, or kroom, beautifully situated, and only half a mile distant from the latter, suddenly presents itself, being almost concealed with cocoa, palm, and cachu-trees. This is a fishing village, having a great number of canoes, some of the most simple construction, consisting merely of a cocoa-tree, of about eighteen inches diameter, and twelve or fifteen feet in length, hollowed out with the exception of a foot at each end. This unshapely vessel often carries three boys, who navigate it with a skill quite astonishing, bringing home sometimes a thousand fish. About six miles higher, and magnetic west, is another town, called Badaguay. This town has a weekly market. Its manufactures consist of cotton cloths, generally blue and white stripe, earthen pots, lime, indigo, country mats, and grass bags holding about a bushel. This town is also on the left bank. The river is still only four feet and a half deep. Three miles farther, on the right, is a beautiful grove of the cabbage palm-tree, extending for several miles. The belt of cocoa terminates where the cabbage-palm commences. The latter tree is of a very singular and graceful appearance. At the root it is not more than one foot in diameter, and rises to the height of fifty feet. This singular tree gradually thickens till it reaches one-third of its height, its graceful swell increasing its diameter to twenty inches. It then again decreases in thickness to the commencement of the branches, or leaves, which resemble a number of ladies’ fans, each leaf beautifully ribbed like a plaited frill, about four feet long, and spreading so as to form three-fourths of a circle. To those who have never seen one of these trees, it seems a wonderful production of Nature. The lagoon becomes here half a mile wide, and continues only four feet deep during the dry season. After ascending six miles nearly due west, it widens to three-quarters of a mile, and becomes thickly wooded on the right bank with large trees of different species, mixed with beautiful shrubs of various kinds of the laurel tribe, and numerous orchideous and parasitical plants, together with a great number of singing birds of varied and beautiful plumage. The quiet stillness of the scene, under the rays of a tropical sun, had, at least for a short period, a pleasing effect upon my mind, recalling to my memory scenes of boyhood. Those happy days recur to us now only as it were in dreams, which quickly float past, and vanish on the rapid and silent stream of life.