204 
THE SEYCHELLES 
The first observed was in 1862 and, according to the 
accounts of eye-witnesses, it raged in a fearful manner. 
Col. Pelly says that the roaring and howling of the sea, 
of which nothing was to be seen but froth and foam, 
was quite awful. '‘The aspect of the land after the 
storm was a sad one: precipices undermined by the rain 
slid down into the deep, burying gardens, houses and 
man in their fall; brooks swelled into rivers and their 
floods swept everything into the sea; trees were rooted 
up, cocoa-nut palms snapped off, and on the land lay 
wrecks of vessels that had been dashed to pieces by 
the elements.” Since then little has been heard of any 
further storms. 
The fertility of the soil is very great. The land ex¬ 
hibits a luxuriant covering of vegetation, which the travel¬ 
ler coming from the Red Sea and its dreary coasts 
hails with pleasing emotions. 
The cocoa-nut palm flourishes on the islands in rare 
beauty, and, whereas elsewhere it is to be seen chiefly 
on the shore and the belt of coast, it reaches here high 
up the slopes of the mountains. The flora exhibits 
some 340 species, of which 60 are indigenous. Areca 
palms and sago palms, side by side with cinnamon trees, 
mangoes, and the picturesque bamboos (^Nashis borbo 7 iic 2 is) 
adorn the gardens and hill sides. One fan palm, which 
has attained great celebrity, is peculiar to the Seychelles, 
viz., the apparently almost extinct Lodoicea ScycJiellm^jmi^ 
the fruit of which, the so-called double cocoa nut or 
Maidive nut, was known to the Portuguese under the 
name "Coco do Mar”. These were fished up at the 
Maldives and on the Malabar coast, their origin being 
unknown; they were said to have grown in the depths 
of the Indian Ocean, and even so respectable a 
writer as Rumphius in his Hcrbarunn amboineiise tries 
in all seriousness to make this credible. But in the 
year 1789 the home of this palm was discovered to be 
