Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/391

] turned to offer us some odoriferous flowers; but as she wanted a string to form them into nosegays, we had an opportunity of observing the readiness, with which those natives obtain a fibrous substance from the bastard aloe, called agave vivipara. The master of the house ran out and cut a leaf of that plant, and placing it upon his thigh, in order to split it with his large knife, and to free it from the pith, he soon produced a parcel of filaments, as long as the leaf, and as strong as those of our best hemp.

In our return, we met a slave whose decrepitude excited our curiosity. But it was to no purpose that we asked him, how old he was; for he could not satisfy us in that particular, as he knew nothing about it. It appeared strange to us, that a man should not have counted the number of years which he had passed in slavery!!

28th. This day I took an airing in the road, in a canoe with a double outrigger. Some sportsmen, taking the opportunity of this rapid conveyance to the eastward of the town, joined our party. We followed the right bank of the road, at a little distance from the shore. The water was so limpid as to disclose to our view, at the depth of three and four fathoms, the bottom composed of white coral, on which we could perfectly distinguish the species of ray, or thornback, remark- able