Page:Colnett - Voyage to the South Pacific (IA cihm 33242).djvu/187

 water bay. Though there is a great plenty of wood, that which is near the hore, is not large enough for any purpoe, but to ue as fire-wood. In the mountains the trees may be of a larger ize, as they grow to the ummit of them. I do not think that the watering-place which we aw, is the only one on the iland; and I have no doubt, if wells were dug any where beneath the hills, that it would be found in great plenty; they mut be made, however, at ome ditance from the andy beach, as within a few yards behind them, is a large lagoon of alt water, from three to eight feet in depth, which ries and falls with the tide; and in a few hours a channel might be cut into it. The woods abound with tortoies, doves, and guanas, and the lagoons with teal. The earth produces wild mint, orrel, and a plant reembling the cloth-tree of Otaheite and the Sandwich Iles, whoe leaves are an excellent ubtitute for the China tea, and was indeed preferred to it by my people as well as myelf. There are many other kinds of trees, particularly the moli-tree, mentioned by Mr. Falkner, and the algarrooa, but that which abounds, in a uperior degree, is the cotton tree. There is great plenty of every kind of fih that inhabit the tropical Latitudes; mullet, devil-fih, and green turtle were in great abundance. But all the luxuries of the ea, yielded to that which the iland afforded us in the land tortoie,