There is nothing further to be seen in the town, but the environs, or rather the whole island, offers the most enchanting sight.  The view cannot certainly be called magnificent or grand, since one great feature necessary to give it this character, namely, mountains, is entirely wanting.  The highest hill, on which the governor’s house and the telegraph are situated, is scarcely more than 200 feet high, but the luxuriant verdancy, the neat houses of the Europeans in the midst of beautiful gardens, the plantations of the most precious spices, the elegant areca and feathered palms, with their slim stems shooting up to a height of a hundred feet, and spreading out into the thick feather-like tuft of fresh green, by which they are distinguished from every other kind of palms, and, lastly, the jungle in the back-ground, compose a most beautiful landscape, and which appears doubly lovely to a person like myself, just escaped from that prison ycleped Canton, or from the dreary scenery about the town of Victoria.

The whole island is intersected with excellent roads, of which those skirting the sea-shore are the most frequented, and where handsome carriages, and horses from New Holland, and even from England, {120a} are to be seen.  Besides the European carriages, there are also certain vehicles of home manufacture called palanquins, which are altogether closed and surrounded on all sides with jalousies.  Generally, there is but one horse, at the side of which both the coachman and footman run on foot.  I could not help expressing my indignation at the barbarity of this custom, when I was informed that the residents had wanted to abolish it, but that the servants had protested against it, and begged to be allowed to run beside the carriage rather than sit or stand upon it.  They cling to the horse or vehicle, and are thus dragged along with it.

Hardly a day passed that we did not drive out.  Twice a week a very fine military band used to play on the esplanade close to the sea, and the whole world of fashionables would either walk or drive to the place to hear the music.  The carriages were ranged several rows deep, and surrounded by young beaux on foot and horseback; any one might have been excused for imagining himself in an European city.  As for myself, it gave me more pleasure to visit a plantation, or some other place of the kind, than to stop and look on what I had so often witnessed in Europe. {120b}

I frequently used to visit the plantations of nutmegs and cloves, and refresh myself with their balsamic fragrance.  The nutmeg-tree is about the size of a fine apricot-bush, and is covered from top to bottom with thick foliage; the branches grow very low down the stem, and the leaves shine as if they were varnished.  The fruit is exactly similar to an apricot covered with yellowish-brown spots.  When ripe it bursts, exposing to view a round kernel about the size of a nut, enclosed in a kind of net-work of a fine deep red:  this network is known as