Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/290

238 any habitation whatever, on the side of the road which we pursued. It differed from the others, being built of stone from the base till about half way up.

We halted about noon, under the shade of several casuarina equesetifolia, and of several new species of cerbera, which grew on the banks of a rivulet, where we quenched our thirst, and in which we found some fragments of roche de corne, brought down by the water. We caught two sea-snakes (coluber laticandotus), which we broiled and eat, but found very tough and ill tasted.

We were about eleven miles distant from our vessels when fresh marks of devastation made us lament the lot of the wretched inhabitants, whom revenge often prompts to the commission of the most horrible excesses. They had destroyed the principal habitations, and cut off the tops of all the cocoa-trees about them, having only spared two small sheds which were covered with spongy bark of the melaleuca latifolia.

Presently after a forest of cocoa trees, whose tops we perceived at the distance of a mile and a half to the west, together with several columns of smoke which rose in different directions, were indications of a great population. We directed our course toward this place for some time, but the marshy ground which we must have crossed