418 



Notes on the Infincnce 



[No. 30, 



India Company. It is printed in the narrative of the voyage 

 performed for the first time by French ships to Arabia Felix 

 about the year 1709, and was published by M. de la Eoquc. 

 'Among those plains which are on the mountains of Bourbon,' 

 says ]\[. de Villers, the most remarkable, though no account 

 lias yet been given of it, is that which has been denominated the 

 plain of the Caflres. In this plain there are a great number of 

 aspen trees which are always green, the other trees have a moss 

 more than a fathom in length, which covers their trunks and their 

 large branches. They are dead, without foliage, and so impreg- 

 nated with water, that it is almost impossible to malvo a fire witli 

 them. If with great difficulty you at length kindle some of the 

 boughs, the fire is black without flame, yielding a reddish smoke, 

 which spoils meat instead of dressing it ; you can scarcely find in 

 the whole plain a single spot where you can make a fire unless yoa 

 choose some elevation near the peaks ; for the soil of the plain is 

 so humid that the water every where gushes out and you arc con- 

 tinually in mud and wet up to the calf of the leg. * * * 

 But from the thick fog which surrounds these peaks, from their 

 continual haze, wliich wets as much as rain and which falls during 

 the night, it is evident that they attract the vapors which the sun 

 raises by day from the sea and which disappear by night. Hence 

 is formed the sheet of water which inundates the plain of the 

 Cafi*res, and from which issue most of the rivers"and streams that 

 water the island. A vegetable attraction is Kkewise perceptible in 

 those ever-green aspens and trees constantly humid, with which it 

 is impossible to kindle a fire. The island of Bourbon is nearly cir- 

 cular and rises out of the sea like the half of an orange. On the 

 most elevated part of this hemisphere are situated the plain of 

 Silaos and that of the Cafires, where nature has placed that laby- 

 rintli of peaks incessantly shrouded in fogs, planted like nine pins 

 and lofty as towers. 



If time and space permitted, I could demonstrate that there are 

 a multitude of similar peaks on the chains of lofty mountains, of 

 the Cordilleras, of Taurus and others, and in the centre of most 

 islands, without the possibility of supposing, conformably to the 

 received opinion, that they are the remains of a primitive eartli 

 which was raised to that height, for as we have before asked, what 



