Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/381

] portions of their gardens to this valuable plant; but they content themselves with regaling on its juice, which they express by mastication.

In addition to the agreeable and wholesome liquor afforded by this fine palm, the leaves (or limbs ) are adorned, towards the base, with filaments which the natives convert into good cordage. From the form and black colour of those filaments, one would take them, at the first sight, for horse-hair, but they are almost twice as large. The young fruit, prepared with sugar, makes an excellent comfit.

Some fractures in the earth near the bottoms of the hills, disclosed to our view the hard, clear, steatite, which forms their bases.

22d. In an excursion which I made to the south-west, I found many rocks of very friable schistus, of a light grey colour, and near a very hard species of asbestos.

One would be apt to imagine, that, in an island so little removed from the Equator, the preparation of the subjects of natural history would be

singularly