About seven o’clock I started up the bed of the brook, as affording the easiest path by which to penetrate the forest that, coming down nearly to the beach, extended on each hand as far as I could see. To the south was a stretch of low land, perhaps twenty acres in extent, covered for the most part with grass, and in the lowest portion with reeds and rushes. Just as the brook emerged from the forest it was shadowed by a dense mass of tall canes. The grass I had used in the construction of my house was a coarse variety growing from two and a half to three feet in height. On the higher ground grew a slenderer variety with heavy seed heads, a sample of which I gathered as it seemed to resemble canary seed, and might serve as food. Great quantities of this grass grew thickly on the knolls and higher parts of the upland. The water deepened where I waded through the canebrake, and ran with a sluggish current. I gathered a great bundle of rushes, and laid them on the bank, intending to pick them up on my return. They would be useful in weaving me a substitute for a hat, a convenience which I lacked at that time.
Just at the farther border of the canebrake, there was a muddy place where pigs had evidently been wallowing, for I found thousands of tracks about. Here was a favorite resort for them, not above a quarter of a mile from my house; but I wasted no time then hunting for this game, as I had formed no plan for its capture.
One thing I wanted to find was a bed of clay, which could be put to many valuable uses, especially the building of a fireplace and chimney. There was reason to believe that plenty was to be had on the island, which was of volcanic formation, and moreover the water of the brook, swollen by the recent rain, was stained as though with clay.
As I neared the line of cliff and rocks that formed the central ridge or back-bone of the island, the course of the stream bent to the north, and the forest was interspersed with small open glades where the great butterflies floated across through the sunshine, the metallic satiny blue of their lustrous wings glancing in the light. A flock of parrots with green, red, and blue plumage were chattering and screaming noisily in the bordering trees, and an occasional little green lizard would dash along the fallen trunks or over the rocks like a flash of emerald light. In one of these glades I found a quantity of shrubs growing about ten feet high and loaded with berries about the size of pepper-corns. The outside of these berries seemed covered with a greenish white wax. The leaf was somewhat like the myrtle. A sample of this, and of several other varieties of vegetation which were strange to me, I gathered to take home for identification in my manual of botany. I may here state that this berry-bearing shrub turned out to be the wax myrtle (_Myrica cerifera_ of the botanists), and that the waxy coating of the berries was what is known as bay-berry tallow. This wax can be readily collected by boiling the drupes and skimming it off as it rises to the surface of the water; and a bushel of the berries will yield from four to five pounds of the wax, which can be employed to make excellent candles.