THE GARDENS. 



351 



more or less affected with intermittent or remittent 

 fever and ague ; they now looked very sickly and 

 debilitated, and many were still in hospital, or had 

 only just come out of it. The buildings consisted 

 of a wooden cottage of three or four rooms for the 

 commandant, a wooden hospital tolerably spacious 

 and airy, two wooden buildings of two stories, — the 

 upper for mess-room and officers' quarters, and the 

 lower used as store-rooms, and a square, surrounded 

 by small huts built of reeds and thatch for the 

 men. Several of the men had small gardens round 

 their huts, containing a banana, or cocoa-nut tree, 

 and a few vegetables ; and at a little distance from 

 the settlement were two gardens, containing from 

 one to two acres each. One of these was behind 

 the sea beach to the southward, the other at the 

 head of a shoal muddy cove just west of the settle- 

 ment, containing some moist soil behind the man- 

 groves. In these gardens were young cocoa-nut 

 trees, not yet arrived at sufficient maturity for 

 bearing; banana trees, some of the fruit of which 

 was of very good flavour ; pine apples, which seemed 

 to do well, and some plots for growing yams and 

 sweet potatoes. In the moistest parts of one of the 

 gardens were specimens of the bread-fruit, the 

 coffee-tree, some rice, and other tropical plants, all 

 of which seemed to thrive in that spot. The soil 

 generally, however, in and around the settlement 

 seemed of the poorest and most sterile description ; 

 indeed, it could hardly be said that anything ex- 



