New England Religious Herald

(A residence at Sierra Leone, Described from a Journal kept on the spot, and from Letters written to Friends at Home. By a Lady.)

Among all her discomforts, our Lady resident found that Nature was beautiful even in Sierra Leone—and even during the rainy season, when the fogs, dense and damp as they are, prove most unhealthy. We must give the entire description—it is full of minute painting, and cheerfully colored. The fogs to which we have alluded arise out of the ravines, and brood for hours over the plain, looking from the height above "like masses of solid lead:"

"Commonly the land wind in the morning sends these vapors drifting over Mount Oriel; thence they pass along the hills behind, and the low ground in front, (dividing, as it were, to avoid our house, whirling about like the smoke of some great conflagration, and banking up in grey and heavy volumes, until they completely obscure our view of every place beyond the brow of our own hill. Occasionally they favor us with a nearer approach; then we keep all the windows shut, to exclude as much as possible the air, which is raw, damp, and chilly beyond expression, when the fog is actually on the house. It is this shutting out of the air and prospect together that renders these 'smokes,' as they are termed by the blacks, so extremely disagreeable to me; the temperature within doors being then (notwithstanding the many crannies in the boarding of piazzas, and air-holes left by African carpenters and masons under the eaves, and through which the damp can easily penetrate) more unbearably oppressive than I ever experienced it when the full glare of the sun was on the house. When these most extraordinary mists go out to sea, we may almost always look for rain; but if, after they have hung about for some time, giving us a peep now and then of the barrack buildings, (like a huge bird cage suspended by invisible means in the air,) a glimpse of the church steeple, and one or two of the tall masts of the vessels of the harbor, the vapor rises and rolls up towards the hills again, we may expect it to turn out fine and sunny, although in the depth of the rainy season. And a fine day in the 'rains' is always so much more lovely and bright than the finest day of the dry season; not because coming so seldom, and contrasted with the many dull, gloomy days, but really on account of its own intrinsic beauty. There is no haze in the atmosphere; the distant horizon, hills, shore, all seem brought near by a magic glass; the sea lies stretched out with the gleam of a sapphire, and, except for the floating here and there of one of those pure, white, fleecy clouds, called, in the emphatic language of Germany, 'Heaven's lambs,' the sky realizes all the beautiful imagery wherein poets are apt to embody their ideas of the firmament's spacious and shining vault. The sky then is indeed blue, the sun bright, and the earth green! Yet the woods do not present a uniform hue, which would tire from its sameness. Not only do you behold every shade of green, but many of the trees put forth leaves at first of a delicate crimson, which look like magnificent tufts of flowers, and thus give to the bush a richly variegated aspect. I have seen one young tree showing its upper branches very nearly the hues of the rainbow; faint red, deepening into orange and scarlet on one shoot, contrasting vividly with the pale primrose and pea-green of another, while on a third, lower down, the colors gradually blending, tinged the same leaves at once with shades of the brightest purple and darkest olive; the whole glancing in the sun like jewels.

Ever since the 'rains' set in, the birds seem to have become tamer. Besides the dark-crested brown one and the brilliant humming birds, we have, fluttering among the orange-branches, of a morning, the 'palm bird,' (so called from building its nest in palm-trees,) a lovely creature with bright orange and black plumage, and another scarcely less elegant in form, which reminds me of the greenfinch and canary, having a light saffron-colored head and breast, with wings and tail of yellowish brown, beautifully glossed with green. Yet more striking in aspect than any of these, is the graceful little whydah finch, or, as it is familiarly called here from its jetty plumage, the 'widow-bird.' Its head and neck are far more shining and smooth than the richest velvet, and its tail-feathers, which are about twice the length of its body, seem as much as its wings to waft the bird through the air. To see this mournful looking beauty floating from spray to spray, or lightly perching on a stalk of grass, with a motion as stately as it is ethereal, you would imagine her to be the most dignified, gentle, and sweet tempered dame in all the feathered creation, instead of which she is one of the most quarrelsome, noisy, and self sufficient; pecks, scolds, and pursues her equals, and flies in the face of birds three times as large as herself. Nor must I forget the little rice-huntings, pretty in spite of their rotundity of figure, and clothed in sober suit of iron-grey, almost black, with white cravats round their necks. They are shy, social, lovable little birds, flying in flocks of from twenty to thirty, and seem fonder of hopping humbly about in the Bermuda grass, than of contrasting their quaker garb with their gaudier-attired fellows in the orange and lime trees. I have heard that in the dry season my unassuming favorites put on a scarlet costume, but cannot tell whether it be the case or not. I wish it were in my power to send you a description of the splendid butterflies I see every sunny day; but like all of their tribe, they never remain still, long enough for me to examine them distinctly, merely settling upon a leaf and flower a single moment, or enamelling the grass with their gorgeous hues. A very common one looks as if cut out of black satin, and embroidered with purple silk. Another is black with white spots; and a third, broader across its wings than a humming-bird, is also of a rich blue-black, with a belt of bright green stretching from the tip of one wing to another. There are also many lesser ones all of one color, such as pale blue, yellow, or lilac, that look like flower-blossoms flitting through the air. I particularly observe a small white butterfly in the bush here, that seems as if it were carrying off a few threads of silk fringe that had got entangled with it. But I found on a narrower examination this appearance to be caused by the hinder wings of the insect being lengthened out into flexible tapering points, which give a still lighter air to its graceful body."