On the Botany of Tahiti. Ixxvii 
half a mile to go before I got to thetop, where it was reasonably good walking, 
I was fairly tired out before I reached any place where I could expect to find 
any plants worth collecting. 
Another time I will give you an account of a journey I made to the camp 
of the “enemy,” or insurgents, as the French call the independent Tahitians. 
Fataua is the name of a valley through which a stream runs that passes 
within a mile of Papeite, and which was, before the war, the chief bathing- 
place of the inhabitants. The stream, like most of the others in Tahiti, 
appears to increase in size as you ascend it, so that at the first crossing place, 
about four miles from the sea, it appears almost worthy of the name of river, 
which no one would think of applying to it lower down. In or about six 
miles after entering the valley there is nothing to be found in it worthy of 
looking after, it being a dry open valley, and consequently full of guava 
trees which always exclude all the indigenous vegetation. After crossing the 
stream about sixteen times you arrive at a division of it into two nearly equal 
parts. I once followed up the left-hand branch, but found my progress 
stopped after going about two miles, by the narrowing of the valley, and by 
the chasm through which the stream flowed being choked up by rocks; the 
vegetation, too, consisted of Scitaminec and féis, the neighbourhood of which is 
always a very good harvest ground for the conchologist, but very bad for the 
. botanist. 
_ The right-hand stream appears at the first to be smaller than the other, but 
if followed for about half a mile it again branches into two; this time the 
left-hand one is decidedly the largest, and, in fact, it is the main stream of 
Fataua. If it could be followed for about a mile I have no doubt but that - 
a rich harvest of mosses, etc., might be collected from the rocks at the bottom ` 
of the cascade, where it falls about 250 feet clear into the centre of a large 
amphitheatre of perpendicular rocks. This fall I have only seen from above, 
and I do not know if anybody has ever visited the lower part, or whether it is 
possible so to do. The scenery—with the mountains sloping down on each 
side towards the great cavern into which the stream appears to be engulfed— 
is magnificent in the extreme. Instead of following either stream, I one day 
mounted the ridge dividing the two lower ones, and, after a little search, found 
a well-beaten path, which, after following about two miles, brought me in 
_ sight of the chief pa, or fort of the natives, which consists of a mud wall with 
embrasures crossing the valley on the top of a small lateral ridge, just above 
` the waterfall, and facing the shelving precipice along which leads the path by 
which every one who wishes to enter the upper valley must approach. As the 
wall of rock below is quite perpendicular for a considerable distance, and the 
mountains above almost too steep for anything even to grow upon, and, more- 
Over, composed of a soft crumbly sort of greywacke, which is always coated 
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