Such Gores, Chasms, And Precipices Here Abound,As I Have Nowhere
Seen In The Archipelago.
A sloping surface is scarcely anywhere
to be found, huge walls and rugged masses of rock terminating all
the mountains and enclosing the valleys.
In many parts there are
vertical or even overhanging precipices five or six hundred feet
high, yet completely clothed with a tapestry of vegetation.
Ferns, Pandanaceae, shrubs, creepers, and even forest trees, are
mingled in an evergreen network, through the interstices of which
appears the white limestone rock or the dark holes and chasms
with which it abounds. These precipices are enabled to sustain
such an amount of vegetation by their peculiar structure. Their
surfaces are very irregular, broken into holes and fissures, with
ledges overhanging the mouths of gloomy caverns; but from each
projecting part have descended stalactites, often forming a wild
gothic tracery over the caves and receding hollows, and affording
an admirable support to the roots of the shrubs, trees, and
creepers, which luxuriate in the warm pure atmosphere and the
gentle moisture which constantly exudes from the rocks. In places
where the precipice offers smooth surfaces of solid rock, it
remains quite bare, or only stained with lichens, and dotted with
clumps of ferns that grow on the small ledges and in the minutest
crevices.
The reader who is familiar with tropical nature only through the
medium of books and botanical gardens will picture to himself in
such a spot many other natural beauties. He will think that I
have unaccountably forgotten to mention the brilliant flowers,
which, in gorgeous masses of crimson, gold or azure, must spangle
these verdant precipices, hang over the cascade, and adorn the
margin of the mountain stream.
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