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It was a strangely still wood for the tropics, no chattering parroquets, no screaming magpies, none of the sneering, gibing dissonances that I had been accustomed to, all was silent, and yet intensely living. I fancied that the noble trees took pleasure in growing, they were so energized with life in every leaf.
In some places the ground was covered with heather, and with other bright-coloured small flowers, but all without scent. This was supplied, however, in abundance from the groves of acacia, near which we passed. The birds with gay plumage, especially the parrots parroquets climbing from branch to branch or flying amid the trees made us feel still more that we had got into a new land.
There is a plant among the underwood, which produces a kind of pepper; its leaves are broad, and have an aromatic, pungent taste: the core which contains the seed, shoots out between the leaf and the stalk, and is in general two or three inches long, and full of small seeds, which have nearly the same taste as the leaves; but, on their being dried, the smell and taste leaves them: it is also difficult to find them in a state of ripeness, as the parroquets destroy them before they can arrive at any degree of perfection.
We had been fairly successful, for I had shot four rare humming-birds; but so far we had seen no specimens of the gorgeous quetzal, and it was for these that our eyes wandered whenever we reached a patch of woodland, but only to startle macaws, parroquets, or the clumsy-looking but really light and active big-billed toucans, which made Pete shake his head.
"Our ears," says Lander, "were ravished by the warbling of hundreds of small birds, which, with parrots and parroquets, peopled the branches of the trees in the vicinity of the stream, whose delightful banks were thereby overshadowed; and the eye met a variety of beautiful objects, groves of noble trees, verdant hills, and smiling plains, through which the river winded, carrying fertility and beauty in its course, and altogether forming a rich and charming landscape."
"Yas, suh," agreed Zachariah, brightening, "an' de yaller-hammer an' de blue-jay an' de an' de rattlesnake," he concluded, with a roving, uneasy look along the roadside. "Do not forget the saucy parroquets we saw yesterday as we came through the forest.
Gorgeously-painted butterflies, grand in size, fluttered before me, to settle here and there upon some blossom bright as themselves, and then flit away again through the shadowy, golden-rayed forest arcades. Gem-like humming-birds darted here and there, while hardly less bright parroquets of many a hue shrieked, whistled, and climbed in restless fashion around.
Overhead the trees were alive with flocks of wild pigeons, ka-kas, parroquets, and other birds, chattering and twittering incessantly and as we stood on the steep bank and looked down, I don't think a minute passed without a brace of wild ducks flying past, grey, blue, and Paradise.
The woods were perfectly clear and free from underwood, and the soil seemed rich and deep. We found the same kind of pigeons, parrots, and parroquets as in New Zealand, rails, and some small birds. The sea-fowl are, white boobies, gulls, tern, etc. which breed undisturbed on the shores, and in the cliffs of the rocks.
Great numbers of parroquets were picked up under the trees, and the bats, which had been seen frequently flying about Rose-Hill soon after the evening closed in, and were supposed to go to the southward every night, and return to the northward before the day broke, now appeared in immense numbers: thousands of them were hanging on the branches of the trees, and many dropped down, unable to bear the burning winds.
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