It is one mass of shaded tints of green, from beach to mountain top; endlessly diversified with valleys, ridges, glens, and cascades.

Over the ridges, here and there, the loftier peaks fling their shadows, and far down the valleys.

At the head of these, the waterfalls flash out into the sunlight, as if pouring through vertical bowers of verdure.
Such enchantment, too, breathes over the whole, that it seems a fairy world, all fresh and blooming from the hand of the Creator.
Upon a near approach, the picture loses not its attractions.

It is no exaggeration to say that, to a European of any sensibility, who, for the first time, wanders back into these valleys--away from the haunts of the natives--the ineffable repose and beauty of the landscape is such, that every object strikes him like something seen in a dream; and for a time he almost refuses to believe that scenes like these should have a commonplace existence.

No wonder that the French bestowed upon the island the appellation of the New Cytherea.
"Often," says De Bourgainville, "I thought I was walking in the Garden of Eden." Nor, when first discovered, did the inhabitants of this charming country at all diminish the wonder and admiration of the voyager.
Their physical beauty and amiable dispositions harmonized completely with the softness of their clime.