Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/385

] the next day Citizen Riche and I ascended the river called Baton Ganion, which empties itself into the road on the west side of the town. It is confined in a very deep channel, excavated by its current between the hills, which in many places are of difficult access. We proposed to ascend as far as we could, endeavouring to follow exactly the windings of the banks; but their steepness obliged us to take to the channel itself, where the water was seldom less than eighteen inches in depth.

We had advanced but a few steps, when we met a Dutch sailor, who had made his escape from a large ship loaded with cloves, and which was on the point of sailing for Batavia. The dread of perishing by the contagious malady so fatal to Europeans, who remain there even for a very short time, had made this unhappy man resolve to conceal himself in the woods till the ship should have sailed. We lamented his unfortunate situation; but little did we foresee that the place which he dreaded so much, was to terminate our own peregrinations.

On the banks of this river, there grew in abundance, a new species of begonia, remarkable for the smallness of all its parts.

A beautiful granite, of a fine grain, formed the base of those hills. Quartz, generally very white,