124 STUDIES OF NATURE 



with trees of variegated foliage j tatamaques, the 

 ebony-tree, and what is here called apple- wood, 

 olive-wood, and the cinnamon ; groves of palm- 

 trees, here and there, raife their long and naked 

 columns, more than a hundred feet high ; on their 

 tops clufters of palms grow, while they appear 

 like one foreft piled above another. There are, 

 likewife, lianes of different coloured leaves, and 

 which, iTiooting their branches from one tree to 

 another, form, here, arcades of flowers, and there, 

 long fedoons of verdure. Aromatic odours iflue 

 from moft of thefe trees, and their perfumes attach 

 themfelves fo flrongly to the very clothes, that the 

 fmell adheres to a perfon who has crofled the foreft, 

 for feveral hours afterwards. In the feafon, when 

 their flowers are in full bloom, you would think 

 them half covered with fnow. At the end of Sum- 

 mer, feveral kinds of foreign birds come, by an un- 

 accountable Inftinâ:, from unknown regions, be- 

 yond the boundlefs Ocean, to pick up the feeds of 

 the vegetables which this ifland produces, and op- 

 pofe the brilliancy of their colours to the verdure 

 of the trees, embrowned by the Sun. Among 

 others, different kinds of parroquets, and blue pi- 

 geons, which are here called the pigeons of Hol- 

 land. Monkeys, the domefticated inhabitants of 

 thefe forefts, amufe themfelves among the duiky 

 branches, from which they detach themfelves by 



their 



