Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/496

464 A boat was immediately dispatched, from each ship, for the main land; and I had the pleasure to be of the party, whose business it was to use every method, and to make every effort, to recover our unfortunate mess-mate.

The Commodore ordered guns to be fired every half hour, to enable Riche, if still alive, to direct his steps with the more certainty towards the anchoring place.

The wind favoured us, and, in a short time, we made good our landing.

After having advanced into the country, in different directions, we returned to the landing place, on the approach of night.

We traversed a track wholly covered with sand, where we found extensive spaces absolutely destitute of vegetables. But I saw with surprize, on those distant shores, the grass known by the name of spinifex squarrosus; and thus had a new and an admirable instance of the facility with which plants, which grow on the sea shore, diffuse themselves to prodigious distances.

In those arid wastes, grows a fine plant which nearly resembles the iris, and which naturally classes itself with the genera dilatris and argolasia. It forms, however, a new and a very distinct genus, principally by its irregular corolla. I have