Many Of These Trees Are From Six To Eight
And Ten Feet In Girt, And From Sixty To Eighty Or One Hundred Feet In
Length, Large Enough To Make A Main-Mast For A Fifty-Gun Ship.
Here are, as well as in all other parts of New Zealand, a great number of
aromatic trees and shrubs, most of the myrtle kind; but amidst all this
variety, we met with none which bore fruit fit to eat.
In many parts the woods are so over-run with supplejacks, that it is
scarcely possible to force one's way amongst them. I have seen several
which were fifty or sixty fathoms long.
The soil is a deep black mould, evidently composed of decayed vegetables,
and so loose that it sinks under you at every step; and this may be the
reason why we meet with so many large trees as we do, blown down by the
wind, even in the thickest part of the woods. All the ground amongst the
trees is covered with moss and fern, of both which there is a great
variety; but except the flax or hemp plant, and a few other plants, there
is very little herbage of any sort, and none that was eatable, that we
found, except about a handful of water-cresses, and about the same quantity
of cellery. What Dusky Bay most abounds with is fish: A boat with six or
eight men, with hooks and lines, caught daily sufficient to serve the whole
ship's company.
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