From Hence, However, We Ran Immediately To An
Eminence Near Us, Where The Nature Of The Country Appeared Evidently
Changed.
The plain was covered with a thin stratum of vegetable soil,
which being very poor, was manured in the plantations with broken
shells and corals.
The eminence, on the contrary, was a rocky ground,
consisting of large pieces of quartz and glimmer (mica). Here grew a
quantity of dry grasses, about two or three feet high, very thin in
most places; and at the distance of fifteen or twenty yards asunder,
we saw large trees black at the root, but with a bark perfectly whole
and loose, and having narrow long leaves like our willows. They were
of the sort which Linne calls melaleuca leucadendra, and Rumphius
arbor alba, who says that the natives of the Moluccas make the oil
of cayputi, from the leaves, which are indeed extremely fragrant and
aromatic. Not the least shrub was to be seen on this eminence, and the
trees did not intercept the distant prospect. We discerned from hence
a line of tufted trees and shrubberies, which extended from the sea-
side towards the mountains, and immediately concluded that they stood
on the banks of a rivulet. The banks of this were lined with
mangroves, beyond which a few other sorts of plants and trees occupied
a space of fifteen or twenty feet, which had a layer of vegetable
mould, charged with nutritive moisture, and covered with a green bed
of grasses, where the eye gladly reposed itself after viewing a
painted prospect. The border of shrubberies and wild-trees which lined
the sea-shore, was the most advantageous to us as naturalists; here we
met with some unknown plants, and saw a great variety of birds of
different classes, which were for the greatest part entirely new. But
the character of the inhabitants, and their friendly inoffensive
behaviour towards us, gave us greater pleasure than all the rest. We
found their number very inconsiderable, and their habitations very
thinly scattered. They commonly had built two or three houses near
each other, under a group of very lofty fig-trees, of which the
branches were so closely entwined, that the sky was scarcely visible
through the foliage, and the huts were involved in a perpetual cool
shade. They had another advantage besides, from this pleasant
situation; for numbers of birds continually twittered in the tufted
tops of the tree, and hid themselves from the scorching beams of the
sun. The wild circle of some species of creepers was very agreeable;
and conveyed a sensible pleasure to every one who delighted in this
kind of artless harmony. The inhabitants themselves were commonly
seated at the foot of these trees, which had this remarkable quality,
that they shot long roots from the upper part of the stem, perfectly
round, as if they had been made by a turner, into the ground, ten,
fifteen, and twenty feet from the tree, and formed a most exact strait
line, being extremely elastic, and as tense as a bow-string prepared
for action.
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