Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/408

380 sures; some of them were perched upon the bamboos, from whence we saw them dart, from time to time, upon the fishes, which afforded them an abundant supply of food.

We then hastened to a point of land sufficiently advanced into the sea, to induce the Dutch to build a redoubt upon it. But they had abandoned this fortification, as well as another which we observed on the opposite shore nearer to the entrance of the road. We went on board at a small distance from the former redoubt, and steered for the country-house of M. Hoffman, chief surgeon of the hospital, with whom we had formed an acquaintance.

After making a hasty breakfast, at which spices were served up with a profusion, which made us remember we were in the Moluccas, I went to view the vicinity of this habitation, where a marshy situation afforded me, among a great number of other plants, the beautiful species of acanthus, with leaves like those of holly (acanthus ilicifolius, Linn.), and also its variety, with whole leaves.

We then returned towards the redoubt, the form of which, on the side next the sea, is semicircular, being not more than eighty-one toises in length and fifty-one in breadth. The walls are above six feet in height, above three in thickness on