Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/343

Rh at least I guess by his description, and we saw three of the animals of the country, but could not get one; also a kind of bat as large as a partridge, but these also we were not lucky enough to get. At night we took up our lodgings close to the banks of the river, and made a fire; but the mosquitos, whose peaceful dominions it seems we had invaded, spared no pains to molest us as much as was in their power: they followed us into the very smoke, nay, almost into the fire, which, hot as the climate was, we could better bear the heat of than their intolerable stings. Between the hardness of our bed, the heat of the fire, and the stings of these indefatigable insects, the night was not spent so agreeably but day was earnestly wished for by all of us.

7th. At last it came, and with its first dawn we set out in search of game. We walked many miles over the flats and saw four of the animals, two of which my greyhound fairly chased; but they beat him owing to the length and thickness of the grass, which prevented him from running, while they at every bound leaped over the tops of it. We observed, much to our surprise, that instead of going upon all fours, this animal went only upon two legs, making vast bounds just as the jerboa (Mus jaculus ) does.

We observed a smoke, but when we came to the place the people were gone. The fire was in an old tree of touchwood. Their houses were there, and branches of trees broken down, with which the children had been playing, were not yet withered; their footsteps, also, on the sands below high-water mark proved that they had very lately been there. Near their oven, in which victuals had been dressed since noon, were the shells of a kind of clam, and the roots of a wild yam which had been cooked in it. Thus were we disappointed of the only good chance we have had of seeing the people since we came here, by their unaccountable timidity. Night soon coming on, we repaired to our quarters, which were upon a broad sand-bank under the shade of a bush, where we hoped the mosquitos would not trouble us. Our beds of plantain leaves spread on the sand, as soft as a mattress, our cloaks