'The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. From January 1863 to December 1864. (Edited by the Secretary.) Volume XVII.' [‎26] (55/524)

xxy j PROCEEDINGS OF THE
rim of this coral bowl from any point oceanwards, you strike soundi n «
in from 7 to 8 or 9 fathoms. Here and there, especially on the western
quadrant, you come upon three fathom patches. And on the northern
as also I believe on the southern edge, you find low sandy i s i ands ’
sprinkled with scrubby brushwood, and differing altogether in appear,
ance, as perhaps in structure also, from the Seychelle group proper
Bird Island and St. Abbs are isolated uninhabited spots of the descripl
tion under notice.
Running towards the centre of the bowl, the soundings Measurements of the depth of a body of water. deepen to
twelve, to twenty, and to thirty-two fathoms, and give the last-named
depth nearly up to North Island, which appears like a detached pro-
montory of Silhouette. It seems, indeed, that the Seychelle Islands
are the loftiest summits at the axis of a primitive system of submerged
mountains, whose lower scarps and intervening slopes and plateaus
support the coral growth now sketched.
A steepish woody ridge of hill land runs the length of the island of
Mahe ; now broken into transverse valleys, and now bright with a plot
of green sward; here exposing a granite cliff, and there discovering a
torrent-scarred ravine of red earth with overhanging brows of trees.
Rain falls frequently, and almost every species of tropical plant seems
to flourish ; I observed among other vegetation the guava, the Seville
orange, the leechee, the breadfruit, the manioc, the sw r eet potatoe, wild
ginger and arrowroot, che cachooanut, cinnamon, cloves, palrns of many
varieties for example the sago, the areca, the cocoanut, and the coco*
de-mer; coffee, vanilla, the tamarind, the mango, rice, pawn sooparee
sugar, cotton, nutmeg, mace, the poppoi, also the casuarina, the sirus,
the wood known on the island as the nut wood, and which is useful for
a bioad, long, and durable planking, the fan palm or traveller’s friend,
and the neem tree. I do not know how many among these specimens
may be indigenous ; hut I am told that some at least of them have
been introduced.
The mangoes did not look healthy ; cotton and rice, I learned, bad
een extensively planted during the French occupation of the island,
f e ^? e ^ en ^ r ’ c °ffee also is said to yield a good berry. Sugar,
C visited an abandoned estate of some six hundred acres on the
rtn west side of the island, does not seem to pay ; but whether want
o success were attributable to an unsuitable soil and climate, or to want
o s ill and industry, I could not accurately ascertain. The groves of