Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/459

] ness. We acquainted Captain Huon with this accident, begging him to take all possible care of his stag; but it died before our arrival in New Holland.

We passed the Trials at too great a distance to have a view of them; but we saw a great number of birds, which doubtless took shelter there during the night.

The species of cockroach, called blatta germanica, had multiplied to such a degree, during the months we had passed between the tropics, as to incommode us exceedingly. Those insects, not contented with our biscuits, gnawed our linen, paper, &c. Nothing came amiss to them. Their taste for vegetable acids was surprizing; no sooner was a citron opened than they attacked it; but it was still more astonishing to observe the rapidity with which they emptied my ink-glass, when I happened to leave it open. The causticity of the vitriol which they swallowed, appeared to have no bad effect on them.

The sugar extracted from the sago-tree, which we brought from Amboyna was a bait, which they could not resist. We destroyed great numbers of them, by mixing a small quantity of that sugar with water in a vessel, into which they tumbled.

Those insects tormented us still more in the night