On the Botany of Tahiti. Ixxvii 



half a mile to go before I got to the top, where it was reasonably good walking, 

 I was fairly tired out before T 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. 



Pataua 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 fii-st 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 Scitaminece and f6is, 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 movmtains 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 to]) of a small lateral ridge, just above 

 the waterfall, and facing the shelving precipice along which leads tlie path by 

 which every one who wishes to enter the upper valley must appi-oach. 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 wpon, and, more- 

 over, composed of a soft crumbly sort of greywackc, which is always coated 



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