ixing its
residence there at last.

CHAPTER XVI.

The girls being very much absorbed in their gardens, Schillie and I took
a scramble one day round the point she had wished to go when we
commenced building our hut. We privately told the servants if we were
not at home to dinner, to explain the cause, and not to expect us until
tea-time.

It was very hard work, but when we had accomplished it, we came to
another bay, not so pretty as ours, but much more extensive. There were
scarcely any cliffs, but the great trees came bending down to the
water's edge in many places. Here Schillie gave full scope to her
enquiring mind, and we progressed at the rate of twenty yards every half
hour, while she exhausted herself in vain conjectures without end. Going
over the rocks, among the caverns and crevices we found a curious
creeping plant, the stems trailing two or three feet long, the leaves
were rather oval, of a bright green, and the flowers large beautiful
white ones, each composed of four petals tinged with red. At last from
the unopened buds being so like capers, we tasted them, and they were so
sharp and as acid as we could wish. So we decided they were, or rather
it was the caper plant, and while Schillie felicitated herself upon
having settled that matter satisfactorily, she groaned over the notion
of our having no boiled mutton.

The next thing we discovered was a bright green shrub, apparently an
evergreen, with bunches of white flowers, which were sweet scented.
There being no seeds formed, we were sometime in making it out to be the
coffee tree, but Schillie remembered once seeing a coffee plant at
Chatsworth. So she was in high spirits until we came to another shrub
with purple and white flowers. Some of the green leaves were exceedingly
light, and some nearly black, and they almost seemed to be turning
colour, as we looked at them.

We wasted a whole hour over this shrub and a tree close by rather small
with foliage like a birch. It had fruit somewhat like a hop, only very
much larger.

We now came to an immense Banana tree, out of which flew a cloud of
blueish pigeons. The leaves of this Banana looked six or seven feet long
and about one wide; the fruit was hanging in every direction, looking
like large misshapen cucumbers. Benjie had taught us not to cut it
crossways, but from end to end, as it tasted better when cut wrong. But
it was curious when cut wrong what an exact cross was pictured in the
mi