Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/367

] The Commander had engaged all his officers to accompany him, about five in the evening, on a visit to the Governor. As I knew nothing of this appointment, I landed, along with some persons belonging to our ship, to view the town. It is encircled with gardens, in which trees are chiefly cultivated; because they favour the indolence natural to man in a sultry climate, and afford him a profusion of fruits, with little other trouble than that of gathering them.

Besides the kind of wild bread-fruit tree which we met with there, the inhabitants assured us that there was another which bore a fruit, the seeds of which all misgive; but that the fruit was only of a middling size, and the tree did not produce a great quantity of it.

Several kinds of banana trees, and many varieties of oranges grow in those charming gardens; and they produce delicious guavas, papaws, and different species of pine-apples (anones). We observed there some specimens of the lawsonia inermis, which rose to the height of ten or twelve feet.

Different odoriferous plants were profusely scattered around. We there found the chalcas paniculata, the michelia champaca and tsiampaca, and several species of the uvaria. The Arabian jessamine, nyctanthes sambac, rising amidst those charming