Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/379

] ascend a hill, where we found some young natives setting snares to catch birds. They consisted of hairs formed into nooses and tied to a very long rope, which lay on the ground, and was fastened to a wooden peg driven into the earth.

I supposed that they made use of baits to attract the game; but they told me that they did not, and at the same time confessed, that they caught but few birds.

At the bottoms of the hills, we observed the fine palm which the natives call the sago tree, and which Rumphius has described (vol. i. fig. 13,) under the name of saguerus. From the pedicles of the boughs (regimes) of this tree, when newly cut, a very agreeable liquor oozed, which was received in pieces of bamboo, tied to their extremities. In so hot a climate, this liquor very quickly ferments, and would become acid, if the inhabitants did not add to it some of the wood of the soulamea, which, by the fermentation, is entirely freed from its bitter taste, and preserves the liquor a long time.

One of these palms may yield daily, for above two months in the year, from a gallon and a half to two gallons of this liquor. In order to facilitate its efflux, the incisions of the pedicles are daily renewed.

As the heat of the sun favours the ascension of