34 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR 
The vegetable productions of Madagascar are numerous 
and valuable. Notwithstanding the sterility of the granitic 
mountains, and the bare, or moss or fern-clad plains of 
some portions of the interior, the shore, in general, is 
woody; groves, with pleasing frequency, adorn the land¬ 
scape; shrubs and brushwood decorate and clothe many 
parts of the island. The vast extent, the unbroken solitude 
and gloom of its impenetrable forests, where, under the 
continued influence of a tropical sun and a humid atmo¬ 
sphere, the growth and decay of vegetation, in its most 
uncontrolled spontaneity, has proceeded without interrup¬ 
tion for centuries, present scenes of extensive and gigantic 
vegetation, in sublime and varied forms, rarely, perhaps, 
surpassed in any part of the world. Immense forests traverse 
the island in all directions, within which may be expected 
and realised all that is imposing, and wonderful, and vene¬ 
rable in the vegetable kingdom, where, for thousands of 
years, “no feller has come up against them,’ , nor have the 
footsteps of man ever broken their deep and impressive 
silence. 
The difficulty of exploring these forests, however inviting 
to the botanist by their promise of novelty, variety, and 
value, is incalculable ; partly on account of the impene¬ 
trable masses of underwood, and the abundance of enor¬ 
mous parasitical plants, which entangle and obscure his 
way at almost every step; * partly from the insalubrity of 
the deep recesses, where no air circulates freely; and 
partly from the very situation of the forests themselves, 
stretching up the sides of precipitous mountains, spreading 
* Some idea may be formed of these impervious masses by the fact, that 
an immense army has at times eluded the observation of its victorious pur¬ 
suers, merely by one of these almost impenetrable thickets intervening 
between them. 
