The bright green colour of these bushes always reminded me of the
rank grass in a churchyard: both are nourished by putrid
exhalations; the one speaks of death past, and the other too often
of death to come.
(PLATE 104. CICADA HOMOPTERA.)
The most curious object which I saw in this neighbourhood was the
reef that forms the harbour. I doubt whether in the whole world any
other natural structure has so artificial an appearance. (21/6. I
have described this Bar in detail in the "London and Edinburgh
Philosophical Magazine" volume 19 1841 page 257.) It runs for a
length of several miles in an absolutely straight line, parallel to
and not far distant from the shore. It varies in width from thirty
to sixty yards, and its surface is level and smooth; it is composed
of obscurely-stratified hard sandstone. At high water the waves
break over it; at low water its summit is left dry, and it might
then be mistaken for a breakwater erected by Cyclopean workmen. On
this coast the currents of the sea tend to throw up in front of the
land long spits and bars of loose sand, and on one of these part of
the town of Pernambuco stands. In former times a long spit of this
nature seems to have become consolidated by the percolation of
calcareous matter, and afterwards to have been gradually upheaved;
the outer and loose parts during this process having been worn away
by the action of the sea, and the solid nucleus left as we now see
it.
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