Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/386

328 la Colta de Santa Bonaventura, as it is called in the French charts, about nine or ten leagues to the southward of Keer Weer. We were not ashore altogether more than two hours, so cannot be expected to have made many observations.

The soil had all the appearance of the highest fertility, being covered with a prodigious quantity of trees, which seemed to thrive luxuriantly. Notwithstanding this, the cocoanut trees bore very small fruit, and the plantains did not seem very thriving. The only bread-fruit tree that we saw was, however, very large and healthy. There was very little variety of plants; we saw only twenty-three species, every one of which was known to us, unless two may prove upon comparison to be different from any of the many species of Cyperus we have still undetermined from New Holland. Had we had axes to cut down the trees, or could we have ventured into the woods, we should doubtless have found more, but we had only an opportunity of examining the beach and edge of the wood. I am of opinion, however, that the country does not abound in variety of species, as I have been in no one before where I could not, on a good soil, have gathered many more with the same time and opportunity.

The people, as well as we could judge, were nearly of the same colour as the New Hollanders; some thought rather lighter. They were certainly stark naked. The arms which they used against us were very light, ill-made darts of bamboo cane, pointed with hard wood, in which were many barbs. They perhaps shot them with bows, but I am of opinion that they threw them with a stick something in the manner of the New Hollanders. They came about sixty yards beyond us, but not in a point-blank direction. Besides these, many among them, maybe a fifth part of the whole, had in their hands a short piece of stick, perhaps a hollow cane, which they swing sideways from them, and immediately fire flew from it perfectly resembling the flash and smoke of a musket, and of no longer duration. For