Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/482

454 have but little connection with researches in natural history, we were not apprized of the hour of departure, for which every thing was arranged so clandestinely, that I knew nothing of it, till the barge was pushing off from the frigate.

The impossibility of getting a boat to convey me to the main land, made me resolve to pass this day, on the island in the south-west, the sea-line of which I traced, setting out in a north-westerly direction. I soon arrived in the south-west part of the island, near the most elevated land, where I found a little rill of fresh water, issuing from a fissure in a granite rock. This discovery diffused great joy among us; for we had been for some time reduced to very short allowance of that article.

Very near that rill, I saw some cavities full of limpid water, which I had reason to believe as fresh as that which issued from the rock; for it was more than 200 toises above the level of the sea. But I was mistaken: it was very salt, and farther on, other excavations filled with the same water, were bordered with crystals of sea salt in laminæ so thin, that at a certain distance, they resembled glass. This fact having been mentioned on board by those who accompanied me, some persons, in order to account for the phenomenon affirmed, that the waves must beat up to that height