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.
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