Agoignan, an island with a very rocky coast, presented from a distance an arid and barren appearance, but is in reality thickly clothed with trees even to the summit of its highest mountains.
Rota is a regular jungle, an almost impenetrable mass of brushwood, above which rise thickets of rimas, tamarind, fig, and palm trees. Tinian, too, presents anything but an agreeable appearance. The French explorers altogether missed the charming scenes described in such glowing colours by their predecessors, but the appearance of the soil, and the immense number of dead trees, led them to the conclusion that old accounts were not altogether exaggerated, especially as the southern portion of the island is now rendered quite inaccessible by its dense forests.
At the time of Freycinet's visit the popu
