tted mass of vegetation, and from their crests hung long feathered
leaves, silently and gracefully oscillating in the light air which
filled our sails.

On the top of one of the heights appeared the dazzling white walls of
Fort Belgica, with another fort below it; and along the shore on every
hand extended the chief village, called Neira, with rows of
wide-spreading trees shading the streets and bordering the bay.
Opposite the village were a number of prows from Ceram--strange-looking
vessels, high at the stem and low at the bow, having, instead of a
single mast, a tall tripod, which can be raised and lowered at pleasure.
There was a number of other craft--Bugis traders, mostly square topsail
schooners, but ill-fitted apparently to contend with the storms which
occasionally rage in those seas. Among the most beautiful trees was the
_lontar_ or _palmyra_ palm--_Borassus flabelliformis_. Mr Hooker told
us that its leaves were formerly used as parchment all over the
archipelago before the Chinese introduced paper. In some places, even
at the present time, it is used for that purpose. In every direction we
could see spreading out over the island a continuous forest of
nutmeg-trees, shaded by the lofty kanary-trees. The nutmeg-tree is from
twenty to five-and-twenty feet high, though sometimes its lofty sprays
are fifty feet high. A foot above the ground the trunk is from eight to
ten inches in diameter. The fruit before it is quite ripe greatly
resembles a peach. This, however, is only a fleshy outer rind--
epicarp--which, as it ripens, opens into two equal parts, when within is
seen a spherical polished nut, surrounding an aril, the mace, which is
of a bright yellow colour. No fruit can then surpass it in beauty. The
people who pick it use a small basket at the end of a long bamboo, into
which it drops as they hook it off. The outer part, which we should
call the fruit, being removed, the mace is carefully taken off, and
dried on large shallow bamboo baskets in the sun. Its bright colour now
changes to a dark yellow. The black part seen within the vermilion mace
is a shell, and inside this is the nutmeg. When the mace is removed,
the nuts are spread out on shallow trays of open basket-work in a
drying-room. A slow fire is made beneath the floor, where the nuts
remain for three months. By this time the nutmeg has shrunk so much
that it rattles in its shell. The shell is then broken, and the nutmegs
are sorte