106 VOYAGE TO THE 



young girls seated upon the ground, employed in 

 the laborious exercise of beating out the bark of the 

 cloth-tree, which they intended to present to us, on 

 our departure, as a keepsake. The hamlet consisted 

 of five cottages, built more substantially than neatly, 

 upon a cleared patch of ground, sloping to the north- 

 ward, from the high land of the interior to the cliffs 

 which overhang the sea, of which the houses com- 

 mand a distant view in a northern direction. In 

 the N. E. quarter, the horizon may also be seen 

 peeping between the stems of the lofty palms, whose 

 graceful branches nod like ostrich plumes to the 

 refreshing trade-wind. To the northward, and north- 

 westward, thicker groves of palm-trees rise in an 

 impenetrable wood, from two ravines which traverse 

 the hills in various directions to their summit. 

 Above the one, to the westward, a lofty mountain 

 rears its head, and toward the sea terminates in a 

 fearful precipice filled with caverns, in which the 

 different sea-fowl find an undisturbed retreat. Im- 

 mediately round the village are the small enclosures 

 for fattening pigs, goats, and poultry ; and beyond 

 them, the cultivated grounds producing the banana, 

 plantain, melon, yam, taro, sweet potatoes, appai, 

 tee, and cloth plant, with other useful roots, fruits, 

 and shrubs, which extend far up the mountain and 

 to the southward ; but in this particular direction 

 they are excluded from the view by an immense 

 banyan tree, two hundred paces in circumference, 

 whose foliage and branches form of themselves a 

 canopy impervious to the rays of the sun. Every 

 cottage has its out-house for making cloth, its 

 baking-place, its sty, and its poultry-house. 



Within the enclosure of palm-trees is the cemetery 



