Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/133

] had taken away, proceeded on their journey to the town. It gave us pain to oberve that thee mierable beings were obliged to march forward, without ever halting; though the teep decent of the mountain mut have been extremely fatiguing.

The mountains in the neighbourhood of the town erve as a place of refuge for laves, whom the barbarous treatment they endure compels to attempt their ecape. Driven by hunger they then frequently approach, under cover of the night, to habitations, in order to procure by theft their canty means of ubitence. That they prefer uch a mierable tate of exitence to remaining with their maters, proves how inhuman the treatment mut be to which they are expoed. It mut be very dangerous to trut one's elf, alone and unarmed, amongt the clefts of the rocks, where thee wretches, driven by depair, hut themelves from the ight of the un, in order to ecape from lavery.

Some drops of water, that ooze at this height from fiures between the beds of micaceous chitus, afford the traveller means of quenching his thirt.

The high borders of the cleft, through which we were acending, were ornamented with various beautiful pecies of lilacs: we oberved parti- cularly