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The projecting boughs of lofty trees, which in some places stretched half-way across the creek, were hung with natural garlands and festoons, and an endless variety of creeping plants clothed the water-frontage, some of which, especially the Bignonias, were ornamented with large gaily- coloured flowers.

The coasts of Plymouth Sound are rocky and abrupt, and strong fortresses frown at every entrance. It is the naval dockyard that gives Plymouth its chief importance: this is at Devonport, which is strongly fortified by breastworks, ditches, embankments, and heavy batteries. The great dockyard encloses an area of ninety-six acres and has thirty-five hundred feet of water-frontage.

The coast throughout has a most desolate aspect; the forest is not so varied as on the higher land; and the water-frontage, which is destitute of the green mantle of climbing plants that form so rich a decoration in other parts, is encumbered at every step with piles of fallen trees; and peopled by white egrets, ghostly storks, and solitary herons. In the evening we passed Almeyrim.

Instead of the low and swampy water-frontage which had prevailed from the mouth of the Xingu, we saw before us a broad sloping beach of white sand. The forest, instead of being an entangled mass of irregular and rank vegetation as hitherto, presented a rounded outline, and created an impresssion of repose that was very pleasing.

There are, however, some exceptions, a portion of the ground being occupied by Chinese shopkeepers, who inhabit low ill-built houses, which, as ground with water-frontage becomes more valuable, will have to give way to better buildings, raised by a higher class, who will buy out the present occupants.

The tidal estuaries are here called rivers; and the freshwater streams, of whatever size, creeks. All these waters have the generic name of the Kaipara. The united water-frontage is said to be over a thousand miles; and nearly two million acres of land lying round are comprised within the so-called Kaipara district.