Where seas of glass with gay reflections smile 220 Round the green coasts of Java's palmy isle; A spacious plain extends its upland scene, Rocks rise on rocks, and fountains gush between; Soft zephyrs blow, eternal summers reign, And showers prolific bless the soil,--in vain! 225 --No spicy nutmeg scents the vernal gales, Nor towering plaintain shades the mid-day vales; No grassy mantle hides the sable hills, No flowery chaplet crowns the trickling rills; Nor tufted moss, nor leathery lichen creeps 230 In russet tapestry o'er the crumbling steeps. --No step retreating, on the sand impress'd, Invites the visit of a second guest; No refluent fin the unpeopled stream divides, No revolant pinion cleaves the airy tides; 235 Nor handed moles, nor beaked worms return, That mining pass the irremeable bourn.-- Fierce in dread silence on the blasted heath Fell UPAS sits, the HYDRA-TREE of death. Lo! from one root, the envenom'd soil below, 240 A thousand vegetative serpents grow; In shining rays the scaly monster spreads O'er ten square leagues his far-diverging heads; Or in one trunk entwists his tangled form, Looks o'er the clouds, and hisses in the storm. [_Upas_. l. 238. There is a poison-tree in the island of Java, which is said by its effluvia to have depopulated the country for 12 or 14 miles round the place of its growth. It is called, in the Malayan language, Bohon-Upas; with the juice of it the most poisonous arrows are prepared; and, to gain this, the condemned criminals are sent to the tree with proper direction both to get the juice and to secure themselves from the malignant exhalations of the tree; and are pardoned if they bring back a certain quantity of the poison. But by the registers there kept, not one in four are said to return. Not only animals of all kinds, both quadrupeds, fish, and birds, but all kinds of vegetables also are destroyed by the effluvia of the noxious tree; so that, in a district of 12 or 14 miles round it, the face of the earth is quite barren and rocky, intermixed only with the skeletons of men and animals; affording a scene of melancholy beyond what poets have described or painters delineated. Two younger trees of its own species are said to grow near it. See London Magazine for 1784, or 1783. Translated from a description of the poison-tree of the island of Java, written in Dutch by N.P. Foereh. For a further account of it, see a note at the end of the work.]