The cottages of small proprietors and slaves strew the farms. They are huts of wattle and rufous loamy dab, to which large unbaked bricks of red clay are sometimes preferred. The usual cajan pent-roof forms deep dark eaves, propped by untrimmed palm-boles. These dwellings are unwholesome, because none boast of a second storey; they are not even built upon piles, and thus their sole defence against the surrounding malaria is the shrubbery planted by nature’s hand. Sickness seems generally, both in the island and on the continent, to follow turning up fresh soil, and the highlands are often more subject to miasma than the lowlands. The lines of communication consist of mere footpaths, instead of the broad roads required for the ventilation of the country. When the produce of the land is valuable the lanes are lined with cactus, milk- bush (euphorbia), and succulent plants, whose foliage shines with metallic lustre. Set in little ridges, the hedge-rows of pine-apple, with its large pink and crimson fruit, passing, when ripe, into a reddish-yellow, form a picturesque and pleasant fence. At a distance from the town the paths become rough and solitary. Nearer, they are well beaten by negroes of both sexes and all ages, carrying fuel or baskets of fruit upon their heads, or bringing water from the wells, or loitering under shady trees to cheapen the cocoa-nut, manioc, and broiled fish, offered by squatting negresses for their refection. SECTION 2. Meteorological Notes—The Double Seasons, &c. The characteristic of meteorology at Zanzibar, as generally the case in the narrow equatorial zone, is the extreme irregularity of its phenomena. Here weather seems to be all in confusion; hardly two consequent years resemble each other. In 1853-4, for instance, the seasons, if they may so be called, were apparently inverted; heavy showers fell during the dries, and a drought occupied the place of the wet monsoon. Sometimes the rains will begin with, this year (1857) they ended with, a heavy burst. Now April is a fine month, then the downfall will last through June. I may also remark one great difference of climate between the eastern and western coasts of intertropical Africa. Whilst Zanzibar is supersatured with moisture, Angola, on the same parallel, is a comparatively dry, sandy, and sunburnt region. Kilwa, upon the eastern coast, and in S. lat. 8° 57′, is damp and steamy. S. Paulo de Loanda, upon the opposite shore (S. lat. 8° 48′), suffers from want of water. We find the same contrast in the South American continent. The middle Brazil is emphatically a land of rains, whilst Peru and Chili require artificial irrigation supplied by melted snow. Evidently the winds charged with moisture, the N. E. and S. E. trades and their modifications, discharge themselves upon the windward sides of continents, especially when these are fringed with cold sierras, which condense the vapour and render the interior a lee land.