Palms crown the highest heights of the mountains, and their gracefully bended fronds wave beautifully in the wind; and the forests, usually about five miles broad, between groups of villages, are indescribable.

Climbers of cable size in great numbers are hung among the gigantic trees, many unknown wild fruits abound, some the size of a child's head, and strange birds and monkeys are everywhere.

The soil is excessively rich, and the people, although isolated by old feuds that are never settled, cultivate largely.

They have selected a kind of maize that bends its fruit-stalk round into a hook, and hedges some eighteen feet high are made by inserting poles, which sprout like Robinson Crusoe's hedge, and never decay.

Lines of climbing plants are tied so as to go along from pole to pole, and the maize cobs are suspended to these by their own hooked fruit-stalk.