The abruptness and sudden rise of the hills for the most part permit the vegetable earth to be washed down into the vallies as fast as it is formed. Some of the more gradual slopes retain a sufficiency of it to produce a thick coat of tolerably succulent grass; but the soil partakes too much of the stony quality of the higher parts to be capable of cultivation. The dark luxuriant foliage of the valleys points out the advantages which they had received from the impoverished hills. Their soil is rich and deep, but their extent is narrow and limited. Some three or four hundred acres of excellent soil might be found upon the edges of the ponds, and by the sides of the occasional drains that supply them with the fresh part of their water. Both hill and valley produce large timber and brush-wood of various heights; upon the hills, the brush grows in small clumps; while in the valleys it not only covers the whole surface, but is also bound together by creeping vines, of every size between small twine and a seven inch hawser. In the SW corner of the bay, is a lagoon, or small inlet, that communicates with the sea, through the beach at the back of which it lies. The chain of hills here runs back to some little distance from the water, and leaves a few square miles of rather good ground, through which the inlet was found to take its course in a winding direction to the SW for six or eight miles, where it ends in small swamps and marshes. Large boats might enter this place at a third flood, and proceed to the farther part of it. Upon its banks from five to seven hundred acres of a light sandy soil might be picked out, in patches of from fifty to a hundred acres each; but on the side next the mountain it soon became stony, and on that next the lagoon it was wet and salt. The country along the back of the bay lies in rounded stony hills scarcely fit for pasturage, but covered with timber, and patches of short brush. On the south side was another shallow inlet, larger than that on the SW running in by the end of a beach, and winding along to the SSW with little or no cultivable or low ground upon its borders. The returning tide did not allow time enough to proceed to the head of it. On the eastern side, the hills being neither steep nor prominent, some extensive slopes of tolerably good, though sandy soil, have been formed. Several which extended to the water, being well covered with grass and thinly set with timber, had a pleasing appearance from the bay, and resembled some of the most beautiful parts of Mount Edgecumbe, near Plymouth. Speaking generally of the land round the bay, it might be said to be much more barren that productive; that there are several patches of tolerably good, and some few of excellent soil; but by far the greater part is incapable of cultivation, and fit only for pasturage.