lacking, and consequently it would be easy to gain some inhabited
place. As to this part of the coast, it seemed deserted.

It was a narrow beach, strewed with black rocks, shut off by a cliff of
medium height, very irregularly cut up by large funnels due to the
rupture of the rock. Here and there a few gentle declivities gave
access to its crest.

In the north, at a quarter of a mile from the stranding place, was the
mouth of a little river, which could not have been perceived from the
offing. On its banks hung numerous _rhizomas_, sorts of mangroves,
essentially distinct from their congeners of India.

The crest of the cliff--that was soon discovered--was overhung by a
thick forest, whose verdant masses undulated before the eyes, and
extended as far as the mountains in the background. There, if Cousin
Benedict had been a botanist, how many trees, new to him, would not
have failed to provoke his admiration.

There were high baobabs--to which, however, an extraordinary longevity
has been falsely attributed--the bark of which resembles Egyptian
syenite, Bourbon palms, white pines, tamarind-trees, pepper-plants of a
peculiar species, and a hundred other plants that an American is not
accustomed to see in the northern region of the New Continent.

But, a circumstance rather curious, among those forest productions one
would not meet a single specimen of that numerous family of palm-trees
which counts more than a thousand species, spread in profusion over
almost the whole surface of the globe.