148 



VEGETATION. 



tomatoes and naturalized vegetables, muhogo 

 (the cassava), and Palma Christi; coffee, cot- 

 ton, and sugar-cane ; clove, nutmeg, and cin- 

 namon trees ; foreign fruits, like the Brazilian 

 Caju, the passion-flower and the pine-apple ; the 

 Chinese Leechi; bananas and guavas, the Ra- 

 phia and the cocoa, twin queens of the palms ; 

 limes and lemons, oranges and shaddocks, the 

 tall tamarind, the graceful Areca, the grotesque 

 calabash and Jack-tree, colossal sycamores and 

 mangos, whose domes of densest verdure, often 

 60 feet high and bending, fruit-laden, to the 

 earth, make our chesnuts, when in fullest dress, 

 look half-naked and in rags. 



The uplands, especially in the western part of 

 the island, are laid out in Mashamba or plant- 

 ations, whose regular lines of untrimmed clove- 

 trees are divided by broad sunny avenues. Here 

 and there are depressions in the soil, where heavy 

 rains slowly sinking have nursed a tangled growth 

 of reeds and rushes, sedge and water-grass. 

 About the Mohayra and the Bubiibu — the prin- 

 cipal of the 7totol[jloi 7r7^£i(TToi of the Periplus — 

 mere surface-drains, choked with fat juncacese 

 and with sugar-cane growing wild, there is a 

 black soil of prodigious fertility, whose produce 

 may, so to speak, be seen to grow. This sounds 



