Back from the cove stretches a little hollow, its floor rising
gently to the level of the plateau. Innumerable clear springs
which burst from the mountain converge to a limpid stream, which
winds through the hollow to fall into the little bay. All the
plateau and much of the peak are clothed with woods, a beautiful
bright green against the sapphire of sea and sky. High above all
other growth wave the feathery tops of the cocoa-palms, which
flourish here luxuriantly. You saw them in their thousands,
slender and swaying, tossing all together in the light sea-wind
their crowns of nodding plumes.
The palms were nowhere more abundant than in the hollow by the cove
where our camp was made, and their size and the regularity of their
order spoke of cultivation. Guavas, oranges and lemons grew here,
too, and many beautiful banana-palms. The rank forest growth had
been so thoroughly cleared out that it had not yet returned, except
stealthily in the shape of brilliant-flowered creepers which wound
their sinuous way from tree to tree, like fair Delilahs striving to
overcome arboreal Samsons by their wiles. They were rankest beside
the stream, which ran at one edge of the hollow under the rise of
the plateau.
At the side of the clearing toward the stream stood a hut, built of
cocoa-palm logs. Its roof of palm-thatch had been scattered by
storms.
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