Here and there a few gentle declivities gave access to its crest.
In the north, at a quarter of a mile from the stranding place, was the mouth of a little river, which could not have been perceived from the offing.

On its banks hung numerous _rhizomas_, sorts of mangroves, essentially distinct from their congeners of India.
The crest of the cliff--that was soon discovered--was overhung by a thick forest, whose verdant masses undulated before the eyes, and extended as far as the mountains in the background.

There, if Cousin Benedict had been a botanist, how many trees, new to him, would not have failed to provoke his admiration.
There were high baobabs--to which, however, an extraordinary longevity has been falsely attributed--the bark of which resembles Egyptian syenite, Bourbon palms, white pines, tamarind-trees, pepper-plants of a peculiar species, and a hundred other plants that an American is not accustomed to see in the northern region of the New Continent.
But, a circumstance rather curious, among those forest productions one would not meet a single specimen of that numerous family of palm-trees which counts more than a thousand species, spread in profusion over almost the whole surface of the globe.
Above the sea-shore a great number of very noisy birds were flying, which belonged for the greater part to different varieties of swallows, of black plumage, with a steel-blue shade, but of a light chestnut color on the upper part of the head.

Here and there also rose some partridges, with necks entirely white, and of a gray color.
Mrs.Weldon and Dick Sand observed that these different birds did not appear to be at all wild.

They approached without fearing anything.
Then, had they not yet learned to fear the presence of man, and was this coast so deserted that the detonation of a firearm had never been heard there?
At the edge of the rocks were walking some pelicans of the species of "pelican minor," occupied in filling with little fish the sack which they carry between the branches of their lower jaw.