heavy dew-drops from the broad banana-leaves sounded like a sharp shower.
At this hour the birds are wide awake and hungry; a hundred unknown
songsters warble their native wood-notes wild. The bush resounds with the
shriek of the parrot and the cooing of the ringdove, which reminds me of
the Ku-ku-ku (Where, oh, where?) of Umar-i-Khayyám. Its rival is the
_tsil-fui-fui-fui_, or 'hair grown,' meaning that his locks are too long
and there is no one to cut or shave them. Upon the nearest tall tree,
making a spiteful noise to frighten away all specimens, sits the
'watch-bird,' or _apateplu_, so called from his cry; he is wary and
cunning, but we bagged two. The 'clock-bird,' supposed to toll every hour,
has a voice which unites the bark of a dog, the caw of a crow, and the
croak of a frog: he is rarely seen and even cleverer than 'hair grown.'
More familiar sounds are the _roucoulement_ of the pigeon and the tapping
of the woodpecker. The only fourfooted beast we saw was the small
bush-antelope with black robe, of which a specimen was brought home, and
the only accident was the stinging of a Kruboy by a spider more spiteful
than a scorpion.

Reaching the ground after a ten minutes' walk, we examined the principal
reef as carefully as we could. The strike is nearly north-south, the dip
easterly, and the thickness unknown. The trial-shaft, sunk by Mr. Walker
in the centre of the southern line, was of considerable size, eight by
twelve feet; and the depth measured thirty, of which four held water based
upon clay-mud. The original native shafts to the south are of two kinds,
the indigenous chimney-pit and the parallelogram-shaped well borrowed from
Europeans. The latter varied in dimensions from mere holes to oblongs six
by seven feet; and all the more important were roofed and thatched with
pent-houses of palm-leaf, to keep out the rain. The shaft-timbering, also
a loan from foreigners, consisted of perpendicular bamboo-fronds tied with
bush-rope to a frame of poles cut from small trees; they corresponded with