Bush again, pretty frequently meeting there the sad fate of the pitcher that went too often to the well, and getting killed by the hinterlanders.
On arriving at Corisco Island, I "soothed with a gift, and greeted with a smile" the dusky inhabitants. "Have you got any tobacco?" said they. "I have," I responded, and a friendly feeling at once arose. I then explained that I wanted to join the fishing party. They were quite willing, and said the ladies were just finishing planting their farms before the tornado season came on, and that they would make the peculiar, necessary baskets at once. They did not do so at once in the English sense of the term, but we all know there is no time south of 40°, and so I waited patiently, walking about the island.
Corisco is locally celebrated for its beauty. Winwood Reade says: "It is a little world in miniature, with its miniature forests, miniature prairies, miniature mountains, miniature rivers, and miniature precipices on the sea-shore." In consequence partly of these things, and partly of the inhabitants' rooted idea that the proper way to any place on the island is round by the sea-shore, the paths of Corisco are as strange as several other things are in latitude 0, and, like the other things, they require understanding to get on with.
They start from the beach with the avowed intention of just going round the next headland because the tide happens to be in too much for you to go along by the beach; but, once started, their presiding genii might sing to the wayfarer Mr. Kipling's "The Lord knows where we shall go, dear lass, and the Deuce knows what we shall see." You go up a path off the beach gladly, because you have been wading in fine white sand over your ankles, and
