But they say the grass grown here is not at all nourishing for
horses, and some people import it from Valparaiso.
The road round the island is called the Broom Road. Convicts were
employed in its original formation, and now it is the punishment for
any one getting drunk in any part of the island to be set to work to
sweep, repair, and keep in order a piece of the road in the
neighbourhood of his dwelling. It is the one good road of Tahiti,
encircling the larger of the two peninsulas close to the sea-shore,
and surmounting the low mountain range in the centre of the isthmus.
Before long we found ourselves close to Taravao, the narrow strip of
land connecting the two peninsulas into which Tahiti is divided, and
commenced to ascend the hills that form the backbone of the island. We
climbed up and up, reaching the summit at last, to behold a
magnificent prospect on all sides. Then a short sharp descent, a long
drive over grass roads through a rich forest, and again a brief
ascent, brought us to our sleeping-quarters for the night, the Hotel
de l'Isthme, situated in a valley in the midst of a dense grove of
cocoa-nuts and bananas, kept by two retired French sailors, who came
out to meet us, and conducted us up a flight of steps on the side of a
mud bank to the four rooms forming the hotel.
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