. Three voyages of a naturalist, being an account of many little- known islands in three oceans visited by the "Valhalla," ; . er time I was disappointed to findthat the twitterings were caused by white ternswhich were nesting on the tops of the decayingtrunks of dead tree-ferns. Finally we came to thereluctant conclusion that there is no land-birdof any kind on South Trinidad. We had carefullysearched the tallest trees on the summit, andthere, as in the tree-ferns, we found no signs ofsuch a bird. On the trunk of one of the tree-ferns, Mr. Meade-Waldo found an orchid, which he sent home
. Three voyages of a naturalist, being an account of many little- known islands in three oceans visited by the "Valhalla," ; . er time I was disappointed to findthat the twitterings were caused by white ternswhich were nesting on the tops of the decayingtrunks of dead tree-ferns. Finally we came to thereluctant conclusion that there is no land-birdof any kind on South Trinidad. We had carefullysearched the tallest trees on the summit, andthere, as in the tree-ferns, we found no signs ofsuch a bird. On the trunk of one of the tree-ferns, Mr. Meade-Waldo found an orchid, which he sent home toEngland, but apart from this and the bean therewas no other plant in this valley which we hadnot found in that of the Cascade. Instead of taking us down to the shore, as wehad fuEy expected, we found that the vaUey wasa mere cul-de-sac, and ended with a steepprecipice of several hundreds of feet in height. It was by this time nearly four oclock in theafternoon, and we had arranged to be at thelanding place at five, and here we were nearlytwo thousand feet above the sea, and the yachtlooking a mere speck far below us. It was. H WH O CO Kl o !zi W HH w A DIFFICULT CLIMB 57 necessary, therefore, to get out of the valley inwhich we were trapped as quickly as climb the slide we came down was an impos-sibility, my faU earlier in the afternoon havingcompletely shut that way ofi from us. To descendfrom where we were was also an impossibility,owing to the precipice. The only way open to us wasto force our way through the tree-ferns and gainthe ridge and climb up that to the gannets nests. We aU three felt that we had had enoughclimbing. Water there was none; all our drinkhad been consumed earlier in the , we had to get out somehow, and thesooner the better ; so we started off, and at lengthreached the ridge up which we slowly made ourway. Arrived at the top we started for the Cascade valley, and followed the same trackas that we had ascended some hours pr
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