For beneath us lay the sea, seen through a narrow gap of richest verdure.
On the left, low palms feathered over the path, and over the cliff.

On the right--when shall we see it again ?--rose a young 'Bois flot,' {164} of which boys make their fishing floats, with long, straight, upright shoots, and huge crumpled, rounded leaves, pale rusty underneath--a noble rastrajo plant, already, in its six months' growth, some twenty feet high.

Its broad pale sulphur flowers were yet unopened; but, instead, an ivy-leaved Ipomoea had climbed up it, and shrouded it from head to foot with hundreds of white convolvulus-flowers; while underneath it grew a tuft of that delicate silver-backed fern, which is admired so much in hothouses at home.

Between it and the palms we saw the still, shining sea; muddy inshore, and a few hundred yards out changing suddenly to bright green; and the point of the cove, which seemed built up of bright red brick, fast crumbling into the sea, with all its palms and cactuses, lianes and trees.

Red stacks and skerries stood isolated and ready to fall at the end of the point, showing that the land has, even lately, extended far out to sea; and that Point Rouge, like Point Courbaril and Point Galba--so named, one from some great Locust-tree, the other from some great Galba--must have once stood there as landmarks.