Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/373

] We were much surprised to see them bring some cotton stuffs, and thread made of the agave vivipara, which, they told us, were of their own manufacture.

I made use of the opportunities afforded me by our detention in the Strait to go on shore. I found a great number of plants which I had never met with before: among others, the uviform nutmeg tree described by Citizen Lamark; its fruit has no aromatic quality. I likewise collected the cynometra ramiflora the gyrinocarpus of Gærtner, and various species of calamus, which, after raising themselves to the summit of the tallest trees, descend again to the ground, from whence they climb up others trees of equal height, their stalks frequently growing to the length of several hundred yards.

The fruit of the bombax ceiba, and that of several new species of the same genus, affords abundant nourishment to the numerous troops of apes that are found here, some of which we killed in order to preserve their skins.

The moist ground exhibited almost every where marks of the feet of deer, wild boars, and buffaloes. We frequently found numerous herds of the last-mentioned animals lying upon the wet ground; but they always betook themselves to