Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1875-07-14

To the ship sailing past, the shore
presents an ever-varying outline-gene-
rally dark serried belt of cocoa trees,
whose roots are washed by the waves,
divided at frequent intervals by the
cleaning mouths Of broad rivers. Rocky
headlands, seldom uncrowned with old
fort or white pagoda, jut out, forming a
succession Of winding bays where the
long, narrow fishing-boats are busy, and
the awkward-looking pattimars, or ma
tive vessels, with their tilted sterns and
sloping masts, are lying at anchor. Now
and then large towns can be discerned
embowered among cocoa groves and
bananas; further inland knolls and tree
clad eminences are dotted about, and
beyond them long rolling upland plains,
bright green during the rains, whiten-
ing when the grass is ripe, extend far
away. For four months i'm the year the
southwest monsoon deluges all this re-
gion, and earth and air are STEPPED in
moisture. Hence while trees are COM
paratively rare and grateful objects on
the other coast, here foliage abounds
and checkers the surface with green
even during the hot, dry months, when
vegetation is inconceivably burnt up.
The soil of all this country is principally
laterite, stiff, deep red clay, often
scanned with white and yellow layers ;
when exposed to the atmosphere, the
surface, from the iron il contains, sOlidi-
fies into black rough rock; it can be dug
out and cut into blocks, which soon
harden, and are the universally used
and very durable building material.
Great masses of gneiss and granite are
frequently embedded in it, and, becom-
ing denuded by time and weather, crop
up from the surface and strew the tops
and sides of the hills with fantastic
boulders. A special feature i'm the aspect
of the country is a fiatness-uniform,
yet infinitely diversified. Once it was
the floor of an ,ean, but now worn
and furrowed by milleniums of mon
soOns into networks of river basins,
valleys and hollows, varied with hills,
ridges and elevated plains, all flattened
ut the same general level, and bonded
by abrupt wall-like cliffs. While tra-
versing any wide plain, one may sud-
denly encounter deep ravine, opening
as it We're beneath ones feet, that, be-
ginning with a mere cash i'm the sur
lace, widens as it goes winding on, till
it joins some broader valley. Under its
black craggy rims the upper slopes are
studded with cashew-nut trees, loaded
in the hot season with large red and
yellow apples, from the ends of which
the edible nut curiously projects. Be
meath, amidst fallen blocks and under
growth bristling with enormous thorns,
the graceful climbing fern, Lgyodius
scdndeas, edged like point lace with de-
licate seeding, twiues upward hop
fashion, and the splendid clusters of the
Gtoriosd supertd grow abundantly.
Lower down, the sides of the ravine are
Oordered with close-set plantations of
cocoa and areca-nut trees, interspersed
with palmyras and talipats, lifting up
the enormous green fans of their leaves,
and, statelieSt of all the tribe, the
>mooth-trunked sagO palm raises high
its head, whence droOp the long stream
ers OF its quivering leaves and the i'm
mense clusters OF its grape-like seeds.
Between the forest of tall, slender
stems grow bananas, and pepper-vines
climb up anything that gives support.
Copious springs invariably issue from
the head of the ravine, and, as il widens
out, rice-plots begin to occupy the level
centre-first one, then two or three side
by side, then more as the area broadens,
till sheet of vivid green, 100 or 200