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Updated: May 11, 2025
On straight trees of a foot diameter, grapes, both red and white, and of a pleasant taste, much like those of Europe, grow in clusters about the body of the tree, like the cocoas. This isle also abounds in wild nutmeg-trees, which resemble our walnut-trees, and the fruit grows among the boughs, in the same manner as walnuts.
In this order the fleet proceeds to visit and victual the eastern, or Banda islands, especially those that produce cloves or nutmegs; and at every island it goes to, it is joined by additional boats. This cruize generally lasts for six weeks, during which they cut down and destroy all the clove and nutmeg-trees they can find, except those which are reserved for the use of the company.
A heavy-scented broom and many flowering shrubs had almost taken the place of grass. Thickets of green nutmeg-trees were dotted here and there with the red columns and the broad shadow of the pines; and the first mingled their spice with the aroma of the others. The air, besides, was fresh and stirring, and this, under the sheer sunbeams, was a wonderful refreshment to our senses.
They abound with magnificent trees, amongst which the "Barringtonia" may be recognized, with its voluminous trunk always leaning towards the sea, allowing the tips of the branches to touch the water; the "scoevola lobelia," fig-trees, mangroves, the casuarinæ, with their straight and slender stems shooting up to the height of forty feet, the rima, the takanahaka, with its trunk more than twenty feet in circumference; the cynometer, belonging to the family of leguminous plants, bright from its topmost to its lowest branches with pale red flowers and golden fruits; and besides these rarer trees, palms, nutmeg-trees, roseapple-trees, banana-trees, flourish in the low and moist ground.
The columnar trunks of the majestic kanaris wreathe their huge girth with lace-like fern and broad-leaved epiphytal plants, and the symmetrical beauty of the conical nutmeg-trees in these forest aisles suggests a vast sanctuary of Nature, enshrining the mystic presence of Divinity.
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