prefer it to old clothes or other articles. The various coins,
however, of English and Spanish denomination puzzle them, and they
never seemed to think the small silver quite secure until changed into
dollars. Some of the chiefs have accumulated considerable sums of
money. One chief, not long since, offered 800 dollars (about 160
pounds sterling) for a small vessel; and frequently they purchase
whale-boats and horses at the rate of from 50 to 100 dollars.
After breakfast I went on shore, and ascended the nearest slope to a
height of between two and three thousand feet. The outer mountains are
smooth and conical, but steep; and the old volcanic rocks, of which
they are formed, have been cut through by many profound ravines,
diverging from the central broken parts of the island to the coast.
Having crossed the narrow low girt of inhabited and fertile land, I
followed a smooth steep ridge between two of the deep ravines. The
vegetation was singular, consisting almost exclusively of small dwarf
ferns, mingled higher up, with coarse grass; it was not very dissimilar
from that on some of the Welsh hills, and this so close above the
orchard of tropical plants on the coast was very surprising. At the
highest point, which I reached, trees again appeared. Of the three
zones of comparative luxuriance, the lower one owes its moisture, and
therefore fertility, to its flatness; for, being scarcely raised above
the level of the sea, the water from the higher land drains away
slowly. The intermediate zone does not, like the upper one, reach into
a damp and cloudy atmosphere, and therefore remains sterile. The woods
in the upper zone are very pretty, tree-ferns replacing the cocoa-nuts
on the coast. It must not, however, be supposed that these woods at
all equal in splendour the forests of Brazil. The vast numbers of
productions, which characterize a continent, cannot be expected to
occur in an island.
From the highest point which I attained, there was a good view of the
distant island of Eimeo, dependent on the same sovereign with Tahiti.
On the lofty and broken pinnacles, white massive clouds were piled up,
which formed an island in the blue sky, as Eimeo itself did in the blue
ocean. The island, with the exception of one small gateway, is
completely encircled by a reef. At this distance, a narrow but
well-defined brilliantly white line was alone visible, where the waves
first encountered the wall of coral. The mountains rose abruptly out
of the glassy expanse of the lagoon, included within this narrow white
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