Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/404

376 height; and their trunks not above eight inches in thickness. The natives are obliged to deliver their produce to the Dutch Company, for about the hundred and fiftieth part of the price for which it is sold in Europe. We saw great quantities of the cloves which the natives had spread on mats, under their sheds, in order to be properly dried before being delivered to the agents of the Company. Those people took special care not to expose them to the rays of the sun, which would have dissipated part of the essential oil of that excellent aromatic.

Being upon the beach, I heard the sound of wind instruments, the harmony of which was sometimes very just, and blended with dissonances by no means displeasing. Those fine and harmonious sounds seemed to come from such a distance, as to make me believe, for some time, that the natives were entertaining themselves with their music, on the other side of the road, and near 5,000 toises from the place where I stood. My ear was much deceived as to the distance; for I was not fifty toises from the instrument. It was a bamboo, at least sixty feet in height, fixed in a vertical position, close to the sea. Between every joint was a hole near an inch and 2-10ths long, and somewhat above half an inch broad. These holes formed so many mouths, which, by the ac- tion