I did not, however, expect in this excursion to see any decided difference in the forest or its productions, and was therefore agreeably surprised.

The beach was overhung with the drooping branches of lame trees, loaded with Orchideae, ferns, and other epiphytal plants.

In the forest there was more variety, some parts being dry, and with trees of a lower growth, while in others there were some of the most beautiful palms I have ever seen, with a perfectly straight, smooth, slender stem, a hundred feet high, and a crown of handsome drooping leaves.

But the greatest novelty and most striking feature to my eyes were the tree-ferns, which, after seven years spent in the tropics, I now saw in perfection for the first time.

All I had hitherto met with were slender species, not more than twelve feet high, and they gave not the least idea of the supreme beauty of trees bearing their elegant heads of fronds more than thirty feet in the air, like those which were plentifully scattered about this forest.