214 
CAVE. 
summits of the trees, now and then alighting on the 
lofty leaves. Here and there tall cliffs of rugged 
rock rise perpendicularly from the road-side, their 
roughness half-concealed by the multitude of shrubs 
and slender trees that jut out from the crevices, and 
by the climbing and trailing plants that throw wild 
graceful festoons over their sides. Among them 
grows in profusion the Portlandia grandiflora, having 
much the aspect of a climber, from its height and 
slenderness, and from its growing close to the face 
of the rock ; conspicuous above all for its magnificent 
trumpet-shaped flowers of purest white, eight inches 
in length, and its large glossy oval leaves of deepest 
green. 
We cross a streamlet, which, from some machinery 
formerly erected here, passes by the name of Water- 
wheel, and where a rude aqueduct carried out a few 
hundred yards into the sea enables ships’ boats to fill 
their water-casks without the danger of beaching. 
Here a deep morass borders the road, inhabited by 
myriads of Land-crabs [Gecarcinus ruricola)^ whose 
burrows riddle the ground so completely that, even 
by the road-side, it is dangerous for a horse to pass. 
The morass is covered with trees, among which the 
Cork-wood or Alligator-apple {Anona palustris), is 
abundant, displaying its beautiful and fragrant, but 
noxious, fruit ; which nevertheless affords food to 
these Crabs, to Morass- Galli wasps {Celestus occiduus), 
and, as is believed, to the formidable Crocodile. 
The sound of human voices in melody falls now 
upon the ear, the song of the negroes who have 
begun to haul in the seine. Rude their music is. 
