Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/396

368 it the motion of a saw, and in less than a minute the scrapings catch fire.

The canarium commune overtopped all the trees in those elevated forests. I was surprized to see the calcareous rock naked in the midst of those extensive woods, the rotten remains of the trees not having yet covered them with a stratum of vegetative mould; and the rents contained nothing but stones, which time had broken asunder. Those stones resembled vast plates, of the same nature with those which I had many times observed in our Alps. Their numerous cavities seemed to indicate, that the most soluble parts of them had been washed away by the rain.

Having been driven from this spot by the smoke of the spreading conflagration, I proceeded towards the south-west, where I found, in the midst of the woods, many individuals of the nam nam of the Malays (cynometra cauliflora, Linn.), which they raise in their gardens, on account of its fruit, the taste of which approaches to that of a good apple, slightly acid.

Having followed the banks of a rivulet, which discharged its waters near the place where we landed, curiosity induced me to visit a cottage situated near the sea. There I found an old man, who, contrary to the custom of those islanders, wore a long beard. He was boiling, in a large earthen