Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/252

204 called hisbiscus tiliaceus, the youngest sprouts of which they pulled off and immediately chewed, in order to suck the juice contained in the bark. Others gathered the fruit of the cordia sebestina, which they eat even to the kernel. We did not expect to see cannibals content themselves with so frugal a repast.

The heat was excessive, and we had not yet found any water. We followed a hollow track, in which we remarked the traces of a torrent of water in the wet season. The verdure of the underwood, which we perceived a little farther off on its borders, gave us hopes of finding a spring to quench our thirst; in fact we were no sooner arrived than we saw a very limpid stream issuing from an enormous rock of freestone, and afterwards filling a large cavity hollowed out in a block of the same sort of stone. Here we halted, and the natives, who accompanied us, sat down by us. We gave them biscuits, which they devoured with avidity, though they were very much worm-eaten, but they would not even taste our cheese, and we had nothing eatable besides to offer them.

They preferred the water of the reservoir to wine or brandy, and drank it in a manner which afforded us no small entertainment, inclining the head at about two feet distance above the surface