family, whose urbanity and goodness have long gained it the esteem and
respect of all ranks in Pernambuco. The kindness and attention I
received from Dennis Kearney, Esq., and his amiable lady, will be
remembered with gratitude to my dying day.

After wishing farewell to this hospitable family, I embarked on board a
Portuguese brig, with poor accommodation, for Cayenne in Guiana. The
most eligible bedroom was the top of a hen-coop on deck. Even here, an
unsavoury little beast, called bug, was neither shy nor deficient in
appetite.

The Portuguese seamen are famed for catching fish. One evening, under
the line, four sharks made their appearance in the wake of the vessel.
The sailors caught them all.

On the fourteenth day after leaving Pernambuco, the brig cast anchor off
the island of Cayenne. The entrance is beautiful. To windward, not far
off, there are two bold wooded islands, called the Father and Mother; and
near them are others, their children, smaller, though as beautiful as
their parents. Another is seen a long way to leeward of the family, and
seems as if it had strayed from home, and cannot find its way back. The
French call it "l'enfant perdu." As you pass the islands, the stately
hills on the main, ornamented with ever-verdant foliage, show you that
this is by far the sublimest scenery on the sea-coast, from the Amazons
to the Oroonoque. On casting your eye towards Dutch Guiana, you will see
that the mountains become unconnected, and few in number, and long before
you reach Surinam the Atlantic wave washes a flat and muddy shore.

Considerably to windward of Cayenne, and about twelve leagues from land,
stands a stately and towering rock, called the Constable. As nothing
grows on it to tempt greedy and aspiring man to claim it as his own, the
sea-fowl rest and raise their offspring there. The bird called the
frigate is ever soaring round its rugged summit. Hither the phaeton
bends his rapid flight, and flocks of rosy flamingos here defy the
fowler's cunning. All along the coast, opposite the Constable, and
indeed on every uncultivated part of it to windward and leeward, are seen
innumerable quantities of snow-white egrets, scarlet curlews, spoonbills,
and flamingos.

Cayenne is capable of being a noble and productive colony. At present it
is thought to be the poorest on the coast of Guiana. Its estates are too
much separated one from the other by immense tracts of forest; and the
revolut