Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/189

] cover a large tract of land, that ometimes lies under water.

We found another of the fences above decribed on the kirt of the foret. It was of the ame contruction and height as the former, but twice as long. Within it were broken pieces of drinking veels made of the fucus palmatus.

We arrived at the borders of a lake, which is connected with the ea at flood-tide. Its greatet length was 750 toies, and its breadth 250.

On our return by a more direct road through the woods, we aw ome unfinihed huts of the natives. They conited of branches fixed by both ends into the ground, and upported the one upon the other, o as to form a frame-work of an hemipherical form, about four feet and an half in height. The branches were fatened together with the leaves of a pecies of gras; and the buildings eemed to require nothing more in order to be completed, than to receive their coverings of bark, which renders them impenetrable to the rain.

It eems that human beings are here either very few in number or in a very avage tate. Though a great number of the men from both veels had penetrated very far into the country, they had not met with a ingle inhabitant.

The Cape of Van Diemen is ubject, in cone- quence