Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/412

384 miration; and there we also partook of the agreeably acid fruit of the averrhoa carambola.

The shore was embellished, almost to the edge of the water, by a large plantation of the species of tree called æschinomene grandiflora, which bears the largest flower of all the leguminous plants, and which is commonly of a beautiful white, but also sometimes red. The natives frequently eat it boiled, and in some cases they use it raw, by way of a sallad.

The bark of this tree yields a bitter extract, which they administer as a tonic in fevers.

The day was drawing to a close, and the current set against us. We were therefore obliged to keep close in shore, and it was night before we got back to the town.

4th. As soon as I had disposed, in the most convenient manner, the produce of my last excursions, I went towards the south-east, to a little distance from the town, and I still found plants to add to my collections. At my return, I saw a white negro, of Papow origin. His hair was white, and his skin fair, and marked in some places with red, like those of the red-haired Europeans; but his sight was not weak, as it commonly is in other Albinoes.

This young Papow, was a slave to a Dutchman, and had been but a short time at Amboyna. Where