Next day we went back to our canoes on horseback without saddles, while a pack-horse carried bundles of sugarcane, baskets of cassava, bunches of plantains, and several chunks of pitch-pine for light at night. These were the presents which the women gave to the King's sisters.

As we paddled up the Wanx River, I noticed the difference between this river and the rivers of the south. The savanna shows up in many places along the banks; the river is shallow, with gravelly banks, in which are cornelians, agates, and other beautiful stones. Fan-palms and willows are much more common, and only on the alluvial bends is there any forest. The savannas are shown by the overhanging banks to be composed of stiff red, white, and mottled clays, with layers of quartz gravel, the surface being covered with a peaty soil, while in places are seen vast patches of the white quartz gravel. These savannas present the appearance of a beautiful park, the ground here level, there rising in undulations and gentle hills clothed in long coarse grass. The clumps of papta or fan-palm dotted here and there are lovely; there are groves of lofty pitch-pines, and in places there are bits of quite European verdure-in dells overgrown with live-oak, willows, and banks of long fern.

At the higher parts of the river the savannas give place to forest, but from here to Brewer's Lagoon the whole country is savanna for 50 or 60 miles in from the coast, and from Brewer's Lagoon to Roman River the country is half forest, half savanna. The Indians have great herds of horses and cattle on these fine pastures. The country is exceedingly beautiful and very healthy, and affords the advantage to settlers of living on the lovely breezy savannas, and cultivating the adjacent rich soil in the bush.

This is the country taken possession of and occupied by the English 200 years ago, but given up in 1856.

Paddling and sailing up the river with a fine sea-breeze following us, we stopped occasionally to shoot the muscovy

UP THE WANX RIVER

299

ducks which we saw on the sandbanks. The drakes are very quarrelsome, fighting furiously on the water, in which occupation they are so absorbed that they may be approached and killed with a stick. At mid-day we landed on a large gravel-bank and had dinner, and then slept under the shade of the sung-sung trees for an hour or two. In the cool of the evening we proceeded up the river, and camped at 8 p.m. on a gravel-bank at a place where a lofty forest clothed both banks. As we lay on the gravel, we listened to the strange cries in the bush-the hooting of the wowya owl, the plaintive cry of the sun-down partridge (tinamu), the occasional screams of parrots, and many strange sounds which came from no one knew what beast or bird. For some hours we heard in a large tree a beast uttering its little warning cry at the sight of our fires, 'queeo, queeo, queeo,' repeated continually at intervals. This is a very rare

animal, and I have never seen it in this country, but it is commoner in the far south. It is about twice the size of a guinea-pig, of a golden-brown colour, with the finest fur imaginable. It never ventures out in the daylight. In the books it is called kinkajou.

Towards morning one of the boys woke us up, and we heard the rustling of a tapir in the grass of the river-bank, and its plaintive, whistling cry. We listened for awhile, for it was too dark to do anything; then we shouted, and it rushed into the river. Then we debated whether we should go to sleep again. The morning mists were closing down on us. At a great distance we heard the deep resounding roar of the howling monkey. In the bush the sleepy 'cheep, cheep' of the tarring yoola (formicivora) announced that day was coming, and the snake-hawk was just commencing his melancholy call, 'waaka, waaka,' which can be heard for miles; so we resolved to begin the day at once. Soon we had a steaming pot of coffee, with roast plantains and a piece of beef roasted on the embers, and, having

packed our blankets and toonoos in the canoes, we set out up

the river.

. Among the willows of the river-banks are seen flocks of the beautiful cooliling. All along the Wanx River, where the sea-breeze sighs through miles of willows, or rustles through the cutch grass of the banks, and the sun shines upon reach after reach of pebbly banks, one hears the sweet tinkling note of this bird, resembling 'cooliling-ling-ling.' At times large flocks of them are seen migrating to other parts, but they do not all leave the country. As they fly past at night on their migrations, one might imagine that one heard the higher notes of a hundred pianos struck, or that a hundred triangles were tinkling. It lays in June, making a nest in a tuft of grass, and while the hen sits the cock perches close by, warbling very sweetly. The cooliling is 5 inches long, with an expanse of wings of 9 inches; both male and female are quite black, but the former has a patch of red on each shoulder like epaulets.

This day we had a hard fight with the current, but using by turns the paddle, the pole, and the sail, by about 5 p.m. we approached the settlement on the left bank, where the King's mother and others of his relations lived. We fired off guns, which drew all the Indians to the edge of the high bank, and when they made us out we were received with volleys of guns. Then men, women, and children ran down to the landing-place to welcome us. Their cousins and aunts took the girls by the shoulders and smelt their cheeks, which is their fashion of kissing, and the men shook hands heartily. We did not see the King's mother, for she was waiting in her house to give a proper official greeting to her daughters and her step-daughter, for the mother of the youngest, Matilda, was dead long ago. We then all went up the steep bank to the settlement.

CHAPTER XXI.

Reception by Queen-Dowager-Cattle hunting-Fording river-Fly

catchers-Swifts-Bathing-Jaguars-Farewell.

ALREADY the Queen-Dowager was crying, or rather singing, a dirge, and as soon as her daughters came she fell on their necks, and made them sit down. Then she covered herself and them, and, laying a hand on each of their heads, poured forth her dirge, in which, as she was well practised in grief and had a good voice, she performed beautifully.

THE MOTHER'S DIRGE.

'Oh, my children, you have come back to me;

I was lonely without you.

Other women had their children. I saw them,

And my heart was sore with longing for my daughters.

In the night I thought of my dead boys;

They called me, "Mother!"

I thought I was alone, and had no children.

I remembered my daughters,

But they were far away among the white people.

My children have come back.

My heart is like the young plantain-leaf,

That shoots out when the sun shines.'

Then, laying her hand on Matilda's head, she sang or cried:

'My girl, your mother is dead; you will never see her again.
I am your mother now.

Do not cry for your mother; think of me. I am your mother.

My heart was sore for you when I thought of your dead mother. When we were young we galloped over the savanna with your father.

They are all dead, but you, my girl, are here.'

Then, seeing me looking on at the door, she drew me in, put her hands on my shoulders, pressed me to a seat, and threw her cloth over herself and me, and cried to this effect:

'Tookta Saaley [Child Charley] has a white skin;
He is the playmate of my son.

He grew up with my children.

When I thought of my children among the white people,
I said, "Tookta Saaley is with them; they will not be lonely."
Often when the sea-breeze blew up the river

I looked for the canoe with my children.

I said, "Tookta Saaley will bring my children to me;
The white boy will come with them."'

This impressive ceremony over, we were all happy, and telling the news of the coast to the people who crowded round. Crowds of women and girls came to see the King's sisters and their guests, the girls from the Cape. In no time there were boys yelling, dogs barking, and fowls shrieking, which was a good sign for supper. The men and boys of our crew quartered themselves wherever they liked, and I occupied a string hammock in the house of a man I knew at the mahogany works. I was at once served by the women with three boiled alligator-eggs, and roast plantains with salt ground up with chili-peppers; but the old Queen sent me a calabash of boiled fowl and cassava, with another calabash of chicken-broth. The headman announced that there was to be a cattle-hunt next day, and we should have a grand feast of beef.

Early next morning a number of boys went after the horses and soon drove in about thirty. These were caught with the lasso and bridled, that is, a small rope was tied loosely round the lower jaw, leaving two ends for reins. Then each man, with a lasso and a machete at his waist, mounted