I described, also, our plains or campas, with the humming-birds buzzing like bees round the flowering shrubs, and the myriads of gay butterflies, fluttering over the streams. How astonished these Gloucestershire people would be, if they were to see the troops of emus or American ostriches, which run with the swiftness of horses through the bushes, accompanied by their young!
Insignificant, however, as the forest of Deane appears to me, I find that it once chiefly supplied the British navy; and was considered of so much importance, that one of the special instructions to the Admiral of the Spanish Armada, was to destroy it.
27th.—We had another boating party to-day, to take the Miss Maudes home. The river was quite alive, so many trading vessels were going up. The coal mines and iron works in this neighbourhood employ a great deal of shipping, and the city of Gloucester is, besides, a place of considerable business.
As we boated along that part where the river makes a sudden horseshoe bend, and skirts the forest so beautifully, the woodland scenery naturally became the subject of conversation; and my uncle, after smiling at some of my rhapsodies about “the magnificent trees of Brazil,” told us, that a friend of his who has been in New South Wales, had described the appearance of the forests there, as very peculiar. From the scarcity of deciduous trees, there is, he says, a tiresome sameness in the woods; the white cedar being almost the only one that is not evergreen, in that extensive country; and besides, they have, in general, a disagreeable grey or silvery appearance. One of the most common trees there, is the eucalyptus, with white bark, and a scanty foliage, which is more like bits of tin, than leaves; and no painter, he said, could make a picturesque view of any scene there, because the trees have no lateral boughs, and, therefore, cast no masses of shade. He says, the Australian forests have all a very peculiar character, owing to the manner in which the two species that compose at least one-half of the forests, turn their leaves to the light. These trees are the acacia, and the eucalyptus; their leaves hang edgeways from the branches, and both the surfaces of the leaf being thus equally presented to the light, there is scarcely any difference between the front and the back.
New South Wales, he says, is a perpetual flower-garden; and in point of size, the trees are not surpassed by those of any quarter of the globe. Amongst others, he mentioned the cabbage palm, which rises sometimes one hundred feet above the rest of the forest; and another palm called the seaforthia elegans, equal in size to the cabbage tree, but with pinnate leaves like those of the cocoa nut. From the broad membranous spatha of the flowers, the natives make water-buckets, by tying up each end, just as they make their bark canoes. The farmers use them for milk-pails; and of the leaves, both hats and thatch are made; so that, altogether, this seaforthia seems as useful as it is elegant.
The Miss Maudes having alluded to the description I had given them yesterday of the difference between the woods in England and Brazil, my uncle said, that young people did well to make such observations, and to acquire a general idea of the productions that characterize the great divisions of the globe. He added, that on all subjects of natural history it is not enough to amuse ourselves with details, or to accumulate mere facts, however valuable,—they should be classed in our minds; we then perceive the leading distinctions, and we become able to trace every new fact up to some general cause. This, he says, may be called gaining a sort of double knowledge—at least, it is making knowledge doubly useful.
28th.—I send you a long extract from the last of Hertford’s Western Isle letters. He is now at Edinburgh.
“I have been at the island of St. Kilda; the passage to it was stormy and dangerous, which kept us always on the look out. St. Kilda is so remote and solitary, that I had expected to find it more interesting than it is in fact, for I had hoped to find some peculiarities among the inhabitants, in which I might trace the olden times. Unfortunately the clergyman was absent, and as the inhabitants have not learned to speak English, we could not have any very satisfactory intercourse with them.
“They were a little alarmed at first, by the sight of strangers, and fled in all directions; but they soon became calm, and treated us very hospitably. They seemed to be a most innocent contented set of people—about a hundred all together—and were very comfortably dressed. They use the quern, or hand-mill, as in all the Hebrides, to grind their oatmeal, and to make their snuff. Their usual snuff-box is a simple cow’s horn, stopped at the large end, and a small piece cut off at the point, to let out the snuff, where they fix a leather plug. This is still called a snuff-mill in Scotland, for they formerly used a machine attached to it, like a nutmeg-grater, which made the snuff, as often as a pinch was required; and my companion says that this is the custom also amongst the shepherds of the Alps.
“Their houses are constructed without mortar, for there is no lime on the island; the stone walls, which are raised only three or four feet from the ground, are double, and the interval is filled with earth. In the walls there are several recesses, each covered by a flag; and in these holes, like ovens, the people sleep. The windows and chimneys are simple openings in the roof; from which also hang their implements of husbandry, as well as of bird-catching, with their ropes, and fishing-rods, &c. and many long bladders, containing the oil of the fulmar, to supply their lamps, and also to use as a medicine. Every person has a dog, a small rough species of the Highland terrier, which scrambles along the cliffs, and creeps into the holes of the Ailsa cocks, who live in the ground, like rabbits.