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see on it two large huts and several clumps of bushes, but nothing
in the shape of a human being. (One of our boats visited this islet
on the following day and reported that the huts were uninhabited,
although showing signs of having recently been in use.) There were
three plants ; viz., the Veloutier Tabac {Tournefortia argentea), the
Bois D ’aimanthe {Suriana maritiina), a bush with lanceolate woody
leaves, and a small herbaceous plant. After a good deal of groping
and wading about the shores of the islet, we returned at about 5 p.m.
to the place where we had left our boat, but found, to our dismay,
that the tide had fallen so low since we had landed, that the boat
was now hard and fast on the bare reef, and after repeated efforts
to drag it over to the reef-edge, a distance of nearly half a mile,
we were obliged to make up our minds to wait for the rising- tide
As we were unfortunately without any provisions, our position was
not the most agreeable, especially as the boat was not floated off
till near midnight.
On the morning of the ist of May we Avcighed anchor and
steamed over to the island of St. Pierre, which lies about ten
miles to the south-west of our last position. We spent some
hours sounding off the island in deep water, and as it was
reported that there was no safe anchorage, the captain did not
attempt to land. Seen from a distance of about half a mile the
nearest we approached to it— St. Pierre appeared to be of a very
different character from the islands recently visited. It was somewhat
circular in outline, and was covered by a dense growth of
scrubby bushes, above which appeared the crowns of three or four
isolated palm trees. The mean level of its surface was about
thirty feet above the water, so that it was three or four times as
high as Providence, or the Amirante Islands. It presented all
round a precipitous rock-bound coast worn into jagged pinnacles
above, and undermined below by the wear and tear of the heavy
ocean swell, which thundered against it and testified to its eroding
power by the jets of spray which we saw shot upwards from blowholes
through the upper surface of the rock.
D u Lise fstand— Flora.
On the 3rd of May we anchored off Du Lise Island, the most
northern of the three islets which compose the Glorioso Group.
These islets he about two hundred and seventy miles to the
south-west of Providence Island, and one hundred and twenty
miles in a west-by-north direction from the northern extremity
of Madagascar.
Du Lise Island is of a very irregular shape, both as to its
surface and outline, and measures about a quarter of a mile
across in various directions. It seems to be formed entirely of
coral sandstone, conglomerate, and breccia, and presents to the
sea on its north-west side low jagged cliffs of consolidated eora
breccia, and on the opposite side a sloping beach composed of
hard coral sandstone arranged in gently inclined slabs ; while its
surface is in one place raised into a large mound about thirty feet
in height, covered with trees and rank grass, and probably composed
of blown coral sand. Among the tufts of S - s on he
sloping sides of this mound were great numbers of Sf.rula-shAXs
in a tolerably perfect condition. Many of them lay in sheltered
places where they could hardly have been deposited by the agency
of the wind alone, and yet if they had been dropped by birds after
the latter had devoured the soft body of the mollusc, one would
expect to have found the fragile shells in a more or less mutilated
state, which was not the ease. The circumstance is, therefore,
a rather puzzling one to account for satisfactorily.
The flora was more abundant in species than at any of the
coral islands to the northward. There were, moreover, no signs
of the island having been inhabited ; and consequently we saw
no palms, for the cocoa-nut does not seem to be rnd.genous at
any of the islands recently visited. The prevailing tree was a
good-sized banyan, of which many examples appeared to be veiy
old. There were also several Hibiscus trees. As to uj es,
were a few isolated examples of the “ Veloutier blanc, while he
low central part of the island, into which the seawater penetrated
so as to form a filthy salt-marsh, was covered with a dense im-
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