The schooner had her guns run out, her boarding-nettings up, and every other proper precaution was taken to guard against surprise.

Directions were left with the chief mate to admit no person on board during our absence, and, in the event of our not appearing in twelve hours, to send the cutter, with a swivel, around the island in search of us.
At every step we took inland the conviction forced itself upon us that we were in a country differing essentially from any hitherto visited by civilized men.

We saw nothing with which we had been formerly conversant.

The trees resembled no growth of either the torrid, the temperate, of the northern frigid zones, and were altogether unlike those of the lower southern latitudes we had already traversed.

The very rocks were novel in their mass, their color, and their stratification; and the streams themselves, utterly incredible as it may appear, had so little in common with those of other climates, that we were scrupulous of tasting them, and, indeed, had difficulty in bringing ourselves to believe that their qualities were purely those of nature.