Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/188

154 We then determined to go in their double canoes, which they managed very skilfully, and soon set us ashore, making the passage under sail. The mast was set up in that canoe which was to leeward.

We were obliged to get out of the canoes more than six hundred paces from the shore, on account of the shallowness of the water, through which the natives carried us on their backs. They then showed us the dwelling of Toobou, the king's brother, where we stopped; and the gardener made him a present of several kinds of seeds, that were brought from Europe, chiefly of culinary vegetables, which the chief promised us to cultivate with care. We left him, to strike into the woods, the soil of which was of a calcareous nature; and we observed in different places heaps of madrepores, which proved that the waters of the sea had long covered the ground. On the trees we observed many large bats, of the species called vespertilio vampyrus (the vampire bat), which the inhabitants told us were very good food.

We were near the middle of the wood, when a native, who had crept behind one of our party, snatched out of his hands a pair of pincers, which he used for catching insects. The thief instantly took to his heels; but he had scarcely run four