be given with satisfaction
to the reader. The island, which consists of two peninsulas connected by
a low neck or isthmus covered with trees and shrubs but quite
uninhabited, presents a mountainous aspect, rising high in the centre,
with narrow valleys of romantic but luxuriantly pleasing scenery, and
well watered, studding its verdant surface. The lofty and clustering
hills of which the greater part of the island is formed, and which,
however steep of ascent, or abrupt in termination, are clothed to the
very summit with trees of very various colours and sizes, are encircled
with a rich border of low land, the proper seat of the inhabitants, who
seem to realize, in its fertility and beauty, all that human imagination
can conceive requisite for animal enjoyment. The soil of this border,
and of the valleys, is a blackish mould; that of the hills is different,
changing as you ascend them into variously coloured earth and marl. The
beds of the streams and rivers, which swell into torrents during the
rainy season, consist of stones and gravel, often of a flinty nature,
and often also containing particles of iron. Some basaltic appearances
in one of the districts into which the island is divided, and several
precipices among the mountains, evidently produced by sudden violence,
indicate the volcanic origin of this highly favoured country. There is
plenty of good water to be had over all the island. The weather from
March till August is usually mild and pleasant. During the rough season,
which lasts from December till March, the wind often blows very hard
from the west, and is attended with rain.--E.]

The produce of this island is bread-fruit, cocoa-nuts, bananas of
thirteen sorts, the best we had ever eaten; plantains; a fruit not
unlike an apple, which, when ripe, is very pleasant; sweet potatoes,
yams, cocoas, a kind of _Arum_ fruit known here by the name of
_Jambu_, and reckoned most delicious; sugar-cane, which the inhabitants
eat raw; a root of the salop kind, called by the inhabitants _Pea_; a
plant called _Ethee_, of which the root only is eaten; a fruit that
grows in a pod, like that of a large kidney-bean, which, when it is
roasted, eats very much like a chesnut, by the natives called _Ahee_; a
tree called _Wharra_, called in the East Indies _Pandanes_, which
produces fruit, something like the pine-apple; a shrub called _Nono_;
the _Morinda_, which also produces fruit; a species of fern, of which
the root is eaten,