Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/425

] forsooth, after having diligently attended to the education of that gentleman's children, for several years, the poor man had requested payment! It might well be supposed, that the boasted honour of having educated the children of the Governor, was a compensation not quite sufficient for a man who had a family of his own; but he could obtain nothing more!!

11th. I employed a part of this day, in surveying the beauties of several gardens, and among the plants which adorned them, I observed the Chinese box-tree, murraya exotica, which formed very fine avenues, also the mixed carmanthine, justitia variegata, and the variegated turnsole, croton variegatum, so remarkable for the beauty of their flowers and their foliage.

The lawsonia inermis, called by the natives, bounguia laca, is employed as on the continent of Asia, to stain certain parts of the body, and particularly the extremities of the fingers. The Chinese make the most use of this article.

Soon afterwards I came to a cottage, surrounded with a great number of cocoa-nuts, suspended from the leaves of the roof, and from the adjoining trees. The owner of this cabin, pointing to his numerous family, told me that he was preparing to make a large plantation of cocoa-nut trees. Most of those nuts had ger- minated,