and splintery in many places, with frequent veins of quartz.  The hills,* although often running in ridges, have a rounded outline, and the soil on the smooth grassy places—­comprising three-fourths of the island—­is composed of disintegrated rock mixed with pieces of undecomposed quartz, any considerable accumulation of vegetable mould being probably prevented by the heavy rains.  The grass is very luxuriant without being rank; it was not known to me, for, unlike most of the other plants, I had not met with it in Australia.  Indeed the frequency of the coconut-palm was the only non-Malayo-Australian feature in the vegetation.  As no botanist had previously visited the Louisiade, a few of the principal plants may be mentioned.  These are Guilandina bonduc, Tournefortia argentea, Morinda citrifolia, Paritium tiliaceum, Casuarina equisetifolia, and Clerodendrum inerme,* among the trees and shrubs, which were often overgrown with Lygodium microphyllum, and Disemma coccinea.  The only birds seen were the sacred kingfisher, the sulphur-crested cockatoo, and the Australian crow.  The shells on the reef were all Australian likewise, but under some decaying logs, on the beach, I found single species of Auricula, Truncatella, Scarabus, and Melampus.

(Footnote.  The highest part of the island, measured up to the tops of the trees, is 479 feet.)

(**Footnote.  These are all common to Polynesia, the Indian Archipelago, and tropical Australia.)

The men we saw today were dark copper coloured, with the exception of the spokesman, whose skin was of a light-brownish yellow hue.  The hair in nearly all was frizzled out into a mop, in some instances of prodigious size; the light-coloured man, however, had his head closely shaved.* The physiognomy varied much; some had a savage, even ferocious aspect.  The nose was narrower and more prominent, the mouth smaller, the lips thinner, the eyes more distant, the eyebrows less overhanging, the forehead higher, but not broader, than in the Australian, with whom I naturally compared them as the only dark savage race which I had seen much of.  They used the betel, or something like it, judging from the effect in discolouring the teeth and giving a bloody appearance to the saliva; each man carried his chewing materials in a small basket, the lime, in fine powder, being contained in a neat calabash with a stopper, and a carved piece of tortoise-shell like a paper-cutter was used to convey it to the mouth.

(Footnote.  This allowed us to observe its contour, which was remarkable.  The forehead was narrow and receding, appearing as if artificially flattened, thereby giving great prominence and width to the hinder part of the skull.  Altogether this man appeared so different from the rest, that for some time he was supposed to belong to a different class of people, but I afterwards often observed the same configuration of head combined with dark coloured skin and diminutive stature.)