GEOGRAPHY. 
175 
is a fish in this river called hardrass, which, when smoked, is 
exactly like European salmon. There are also hippopotami and 
crocodiles : quantities of oysters adhere to the mangroves, but 
when the river is fresh they are good for nothing. There are a 
great n amber of singing birds, and a nightingale equal to the 
Polish, which sings in May and December.'' Col. Starrenberg 
heard a nightingale, but saw only one hippopotamus. There is a 
kind of cedar tree, (Avicenniae nov. spec.) which shoots up many 
branches from the ground, about as thick as a pipe, and bare of 
leaves : this tree is so very salt in its nature, that in the morning a 
great quantity of liquid salt is found on the leaves, chrystaUizing 
in the course of the day.* Amalfee is on an island, 48 miles from 
the mouth, the inhabitants of which, and those on the banks of the 
river, of Agrafee, Wefee, Tophirree, and Bettoo, call themselves 
river inhabitants. The former are the brokers of slaves for the 
* "In the province of St. Jago, in Chili, there is a plant of this class and order 
(Didynamias gj^mnosperma) supposed to be a species of wild basil (Ocimuni salinum), 
resembling the common basil so much as to be liardly distinguished from it, except that 
the flower stem is round and jointed, and its scent and taste not like the basil, but rather 
like the sea flag, or some marine plant. It is an annual, shooting forth in the spring, 
and continuing till the commencement of winter : every morning it is covered with hard 
and shining saline globules, resembling dew, which the countrymen shake oiF the leaves 
to serve them as common salt, and in some respects is thought to be of a superior 
quality. Every plant produces daily about half an ounc& of this salt ; but Molina, a 
scientific naturalist, to whom we are indebted for this information, says, that it is 
extremely difficult to account for this phenomenon, as the situation where he found these 
plants was in the most fertile part of the kingdom, and at a distance from the sea of more 
than seventy miles. When we see some plants secrete flint, separate and distinct from 
their fibres, as well as combined with their organic structure ; and when we also know 
that plants secrete alkali, in every situation, I cannot perceive why Molina should con- 
sider the contiguity of the sea to be essential to the production of a neutral salt in the 
Ocimum sahnum." Linnsean System^ London, 1S16, vol. ii. p. 303, 
Riley, whose narrative has recently appeared, saw in the desert, " A dwai'f thorn bush 
from two to five feet high with succulent leaves strongly impregnated with salt." 
