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The tomb of the Saint remains, but is concealed from the world, enveloped in profound mystery, suitable to the exciting of superstitious feelings. In the gardens were many pretty butterflies. I noticed a single cotton-tree, and gathered two or three ripe pods; the tree looked unhealthy and was very dwarfish.
The red cotton-tree is somewhat less in size, but in other respects resembles the other, except that it produces no cotton. The wood is hard, though that of both kinds is somewhat spongy. Both are found in fat soils, both in the East and West Indies. The river St Jago of modern maps on this coast is in lat. 1° 18' N. in the province of Atacames, or Esmeraldas.
The difficulty now was to find timber of sufficient size for the construction of canoes, the trees in these high mountain regions being chiefly a scrubbed growth of pines and cedars, aspens, haws, and service-berries, and a small kind of cotton-tree, with a leaf resembling that of the willow. There was a species of large fir, but so full of knots as to endanger the axe in hewing it.
The silk-cotton grows on tender shrubs, 3 or 4 foot high, in cods as big as an apple, but of a long shape; which when ripe open at one end, parting leisurely into 4 quarters; and at the first opening the cotton breaks forth. It may be of use for stuffing of pillows, or the like, but else is of no value, any more than that of the great cotton-tree.
The light sandy soil of the mainland rests upon compact clay, and malaria rises only where the little drains, which should feed the lagoon, evaporate in swamps. Here and there are clumps of tall cocoas, a capot, pullom or wild cotton-tree, and a neat village upon prairie land, where stone is rare as on the Pampas. Southwards the dry tract falls into low and wooded ground.
While they cultivate the ground, keep cattle, and live upon the lawful products of the soil, they have none of the culinary dainties of life; whilst they plant the cotton-tree, and weave and dye cloth to make their garments, their clothing is scant, and devoid of all excellence in the manufacture.
Roughly speaking, Fernando Noronha itself, irrespective of the group of islands at its northeasterly extremity, stretches five miles from east to west, and averages a mile and a half in width. From Cotton-Tree Bay, to which the catamarans had brought the small force, it was barely a mile to the village, convict settlement, and citadel.
Here we saw for the first time the cotton-tree, with red blossom, and which yields a coarse material for native use. A species of lotus was seen, called here "The Queen of the Forest." It belongs to the magnolia family, and the leaves are used by the common people in place of tea. Many bright and exquisitely delicate ferns sprang up among the undergrowth and about the watering stations.
Watts and Olsen had been warned to crouch behind the rocks on the crest, while those who remained near the launch were told to hide among the trees or crowd into the small cabin. Movement of any kind was forbidden. There was no knowing who might be astir on the hills, and a sharp eye might note the presence of foreigners in Cotton-Tree Bay.
Four brass swivels, which they had brought up, were mounted, fixed in logs, so as to command the path; the musketeers and archers clustered round them with their tackle ready, and half-a-dozen good marksmen volunteered into the cotton-tree with their arquebuses, as a post whence "a man might have very pretty shooting."
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