Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/48

 32 border of rising ground, generally composed of a brown or red sandy loam, upon which rests a plain or high table land of stiff clay, stretching back to a considerable distance.

In many places, however, the high land rises boldly up from the river, so as to alternate with the flat on the opposite side. The alluvial flats are covered with a luxuriant crop of grasses. But on the table lands the grass is not abundant. There has now been a year's experience of the capability of the soil, and there is no doubt that it can abundantly produce any grain, fruit, vegetable, tree, or shrub, which belongs to its parallel of latitude. The sandy loam is considered the best for present purposes, the stiff clay lands being difficult to break up, and requiring more time and labour than many are willing to bestow. I have seen within two miles of this, a fine crop of wheat grown without any manure, and with much less preparatory culture than would be required in England. This was produced on an alluvial flat, the grain being ploughed in, just before the rains which flooded the ground; and in spring its vegetation was rapid and healthy. All sorts of garden and field vegetables thrive well, when put down in the proper season; but nothing worthy of being called fruit has as yet been discovered, if we except the zamia, which produces a nut, which the natives eat after considerable preparation by steeping in water. Tobacco, hemp, flax, eringo, celery, parsley, are indigenous. To the distant eye, the country has the appearance of being well wooded, but I should not say it was thickly timbered. In some places there are open plains that resemble well ordered parks, no where do you find impenetrable jungle, save in the mere swamps and the lagoons. The seemingly conflicting accounts of two, ten, one hundred, or a thousand trees to an acre, may be all true of different places, if you reckon every shrub as a tree. Take, for example, the ground where I have built: to avoid injuring the appearance of the place, I have cut down but one large tree, and not above a dozen shrubs and small trees,