At a brook of the sweetest water, purling over the cleanest and
brightest of golden sands, we filled the canteens, this being the
last opportunity for some time. Forest walks are thirsty work
during the hot season; the air is close, fetid, and damp with
mire; the sea-breeze has no power to enter, and perspiration
streams from every pore. After heavy rains it is still worse, the
surface of the land is changed, and paths become lines of dark
puddles; the nullahs, before dry, roll muddy, dark-brown streams,
and their mouths streak the sea with froth and scum. Hardly a
living object meets the eye, and only the loud, whirring flight
of some large bird breaks the dreary silence. The music of the
surf now sounded like the song of the sea-shell as we crossed
another rough prism of stone and bush, whose counter-slope fell
gently into a sand-flat overgrown with Ipomaa and other bright
flowering plants. After walking about an hour (equal to 2.50
miles) between south and south-west, we saluted the pleasant
aspect of with a general cheer. Northwards lay
Point Ipizarala, southways Nyonye, both looking like tree-clumps
rising from the waves. I could not sufficiently admire, and I
shall never forget the exquisite loveliness of land and sea; the
graceful curve of the beach, a hundred feet broad, fining
imperceptibly away till lost in the convexity of waters. The
morning sun, half way to the zenith, burned bright in a cloudless
sky, whilst in the east and west distant banks of purple mist
coloured the liquid plain with a cool green-blue, a celadon tint
that reposed the eye and the brain. The porpoise raised in sport
his dark, glistening back to the light of day, and plunged into
the cool depths as if playing off the "amate sponde" of the
Mediterranean; and sandpipers and curlews, the latter wild as
ever, paced the smooth, pure floor. The shoreline was backed by a