Here we saw over, through the cocoa-nut trees and wild trailing-plants below, down upon a broad bushy level toward the reefs. It was far the widest way of the island; indeed making it apparently several miles to go round the different points; and as the men were to hold right to windward, and meet again after beating the entire ground, Westwood and I struck fair through amongst the tangle of wood, to see the flat below. We roused out a good many small birds and parroquets, and several goats could be noticed looking at us off the grassy bits of crag above the trees, though they didn't seem to know what we were. As for most of the wood, it was mainly such bushes and brush as thrive without water, with a bright green flush of grass and plants after the rain at the monsoon, the prickly pear creeping over the sandy parts, till we came on a track where some spring or other apparently oozed down from the height, soaking in little rank spots amongst the ground leaves, with here and there a small rusty plash about the grass-blades, as if there were tar or iron in it. Here there were taller trees of different kinds on both sides, dwindling off into the lower bush, while, to my surprise, some of them were such as you'd never have expected to meet with on an island of the size, or so far off the land--bananas, mangoes, a shaddock or two, and a few more, common enough in India; though here they must evidently have been planted, the cocoas being the only sort natural to the place--and of them there were plenty below. Suddenly it led down into a shady hollow, out of sight of the sea altogether, where we came on what seemed to have been a perfect garden some time or other; there were two or three large broad-leaved shaddock trees, and one or two others, with a heap of rubbish in the midst of the wild Indian corn and long grass; some broken bamboo stakes standing, besides a piece of plank scattered here and there about the bushes. Right under the shade of the trees was a hole like the mouth of a draw-well, more than brimful at the time with the water from the spring; for, owing to the late rains, it made a pool close by the side, and went trickling away down amongst the brushwood. Every twig and leaf grew straight up or out, save in a narrow track toward the rising ground--no doubt made by the goats, as we noticed the prints of their hoofs on the wet mud. 'Twas evident no human being had been there for heaven knew how long; since, by the care that had been taken with the place, it was probably the only spring in the island--perhaps for leagues and leagues round, indeed. Trees, branches, green grass, and all--they had such a still moveless air under the heat and light, in the lee of the high ground, with just a blue spot or two of the sea seen high up through the sharp shaddock leaves, and the cool-looking plash of water below them, that Westwood and I sat down to wait till we heard the men. Still there was a terribly distinct, particular