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This isle is in lat 7° 26' N. and long. 82° 13' W. It is near seven leagues long by four broad, being all low land, except at its N.E. end, on which side, and also to the east, there is excellent water. It abounds in many kinds of trees, among which are great numbers of deer and black monkeys, the flesh of which is reckoned very wholesome; and it has some guanas and snakes.
They are the most dreary group of islands I have ever visited, dark rocks rising up everywhere round their coasts, with wild black beaches, and huge tortoises, with legs resembling those of elephants, and serpent-like heads, and long lizard-like guanas crawling over them.
We saw likewise abundance of guanas, and some racoons, which barked and snarled at us like dogs, but were easily beaten off with sticks.
Azara, on the proportion of men and women among the Guaranys; on Palamedea cornuta; on the beards of the Guaranys; on strife for women among the Guanas; on infanticide; on the eradication of the eyebrows and eyelashes by the Indians of Paraguay; on polyandry among the Guanas; celibacy unknown among the savages of South America; on the freedom of divorce among the Charruas.
This afternoon the Eden's boats were sent after a vessel in the offing, which proved to be a sloop laden with palm-oil, from the Old Calabar River, bound to Liverpool. A few guanas have been seen here, and the Kroomen caught one a few days since, which they considered a great treat, and had cooked agreeably to their taste; but no venomous animal, except a few snakes, has yet been discovered.
Noble trees shot out in all directions wherever they could find a little earth and a crevice to hold on by, almost meeting overhead in several places, and alive with all kinds of birds and beasts incidental to the climate; parrots of all sorts, great and small, clomb, and hung, and fluttered amongst the branches; and pigeons of numberless varieties; and the glancing woodpecker, with his small hammer like tap, tap, tap; and the West India nightingale, and humming birds of all hues; while cranes, black, white, and grey, frightened from their fishing stations, stalked and peeped about, as awkwardly as a warrant officer in his long skirted coat on a Sunday; while whole flocks of ducks flew across the mastheads and through the rigging; and the dragon like guanas, and lizards of many kinds, disported themselves amongst the branches, not lazily or loathsomely, as we, who have only seen a lizard in our cold climate, are apt to picture, but alert, and quick as lightning, their colours changing with the changing light or the hues of the objects to which they clung, becoming literally in one respect portions of the landscape.
For the next four or five weeks the company remained at Fort Diego with the Maroons, their allies. They fared sumptuously every day on the food stored within the magazine; while "daily out of the woods" they took wild hogs, the "very good sort of a beast called warre," that Dampier ate, besides great store of turkeys, pheasants, and numberless guanas, "which make very good Broath."
There were the guanas, too, in abundance, with their mouths sewed up to prevent their biting; these are excellent food, although bearing so near a resemblance to the alligator, and its diminutive European representative, the harmless lizard; Muscovy ducks, parrots, monkeys, pigeons, and fish. Such was the stock of a New Providence market.
CHARLES. "The people of Porto Bello are not particularly dainty. I am sure I should starve there, for I could not consent to eat their food. What do you think of shovel-nosed sharks being sold in the markets, and guanas which you know are lizards being considered a special treat? and then, worse than all, the country folks mostly feed upon monkeys. How should you fare amongst them, George?
Some rolled the water casks toward the sound of the cascade; others plunged into the forest, to return laden with strange and luscious fruits, birds, guanas, conies, whatever eatable thing they could lay hands upon; others scattered along the beach to find turtle eggs, or, if fortune favored them, the turtle itself. They laughed, they sang, they swore, until the isle rang to their merriment.
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