Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1876 — The Navigstor Islands. [ARTICLE]

The Navigstor Islands.

For mere beauty of scenery the Navigator Islands are probably equal, if not superior, to any in the Pacific. The scenery of the Sandwich Islands, although grand, is somewhat cheerless; the Friendly Islands are superlatively fertile, but too tame and low-lying to be thoroughly picturesque ; Feejees are in many places sterile and forbidding, while Ceylon, perhaps the most fertile island in the world, is so only in the interior. Alone of all the ocean groups, the Navigators do not disappoint. Seen from the deck of a vessel, a few miles off the land, there are not many tropical islands that present a more beautiful or picturesque appearance than Upolu. Though not so high as Savali by 1,000 feet, it nevertheless shows a bold and majestic front Perhaps, indeed, the weatherbeaten rocks that form the mountain summits are, if anything, too stern and gloomy fora purely tropical landscape. They tare, howevCT, not often visible, but are generally shrouded by fleecy masses of vapor, or wrapped in mist and stormclouds. . * „ Immediately below this stony region vegetation commences. At first the trees are small and stunted, and the undergrowth thin. But every foot of descent the vegetation changes rapidly in character, until within an incredibly short space of time the forest becomes thoroughly and completely tropic. Trees of a hundred different species now struggle with each other for sunlight and air. The soil is a rich loam, composed of decaying veg. etable forms. Overhead the trees meet, forming a leafy canopy through which the vertical rays of the sun strive in vain toijierce. Beneath this the traveler walks in dim, uncertain twilight. Around him all is hot, moist and decaying. The air issickly and oppressive, the grass rank and matted, while from trunk and bough hang long, snake-like creepers and supple vines that trail along the ground, and at every step trip up the unwary. On the trunks and branches of the trees are clusters of rare ferns and orchids that would be the glory of an American hot-house. They grow luxuriantly on the moss-covered bark and dead wood, and reck little of sunlight or fresh breezes. Among these forest-trees are many on which the natives depend for life. There is the ivi (whose bitter nuts are eaten in times of scarcity), the orange, the luin and the bread-fruit. Then there is the stately cotton tree, the somber dilo and the cocoanut-palm, with its leafy crown, at once the glory and wealth of the South Sea Islands. The ground in many places is covered with flowers as with a carpet, while in others it is grown over with a dense and impenetrable mass of shrubs and flowering plants. Here is the home of the wild indigo and yam, the nutmeg and arrowroot, the hibiscus and the oleander, the sweet potato, the banana, and, lastly, of that shrub from which the natives extract the strange drink they call kava.— Overland Monthly.