Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/182

150 with their hands, they spread it over their shoulders and arms.

The natives had already sold us a great number of clubs of various forms, and fashioned with skill, as may be seen in Plate XXXIII: and we saw several who were employed in cutting out others with shark's teeth fixed at the extremity of a piece of wood (Plate XXXII, Fig. 23). We were astonished to see them cut with a chisel like this the wood of the casuarina, notwithstanding its extreme hardness. Others already handled the iron tools they had obtained from us with considerable dexterity. All these workmen had a little bag of matting, containing pumice-stones, with which they polished their work.

I observed several cotton-plants of the species called gossipium religiosum, growing in uncultivated places; and I saw, with surprise, that the fine cotton, which might be procured from it in abundance, was not used by the natives in any of their works.

About nine in the evening we perceived a canoe close by one of our buoys. Apprehensive that the people in her would cut the buoy-rope, we sent one of our boats in chace of her; but the boat had scarcely put off from the ship's side, when somebody was heard to fall into the water. Our men immediately hastened to the person's