as soon as I had paid my medical visits, returning late in the afternoon. Sometimes I went alonof the shore to the south, by a long tongue of land partially clothed with dense tropical brushwood, and partially composed of wide tracts of sand, on the extremity of which, seven miles from the town, stands a lighthouse. Sometimes I chose the northern shore, and walked as far as the mouth of the Zwartkop Eiver. Sometimes, again, I spent the day in exploring the valley of the Baker River, which I invariably found full of interest. Furnished with plenty of appliances for collecting, I always found it a delight to get away from the hotel, and escaping from the warehouses, to gain the bridge over the river; but it generally took the best part of half an hour before I could make my way through the bustle of the wool depot, which monopolizes the 250 yards of sand between the buildings and the sea.
Towards the south, as far as the lighthouse, the coast is one continuous ledge of rock, sloping in a terrace down to the water, and incrusted in places with the work of various marine animals, especially coral polypes. Sandy tracts of greater or less extent are found along the shore itself, but the sand does not extend far out to sea in the way that it does on the north of the town, towards the mouth of the Zwartkop.
All the curiosities that I could fish up at low tide from the coral grottoes, and all the remarkable scraps of coral and sea-weed that were
