Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/401

] on shore, and we were immediately conveyed to Fort Anké, distant not more than about 2,500 toises from the town. The same chamber was allotted us, which our companions in misfortune, Riche and Legrand, had formerly occupied.

We were surrounded on all sides by marshes, which render this situation very unhealthy: it is, however, much less so than that of the town, where, at low water, the black mud collected in a great number of canals, is exposed to the heat of the sun, and exhales the most pestilential effluvia. The marshes of Anké, on the contrary, were covered with a variety of plants, so close to each other, that they presented the appearance of fine meadows in full vegetation. A great number of different kinds of grasses, rushes, nelumbo, &c. grew forth from the bottom of the stagnant water, and the interstices between these plants were covered with large quantities of the ptisiapistia [sic] stratiotes, which, floating on the surface of the water by means of the small air-bladders, with which its leaves are provided at their bases, absorb a great quantity of the noxious vapours as fast as they are exhaled from the mud, and change them, with the aid of the solar rays, as we know, into respirable air. This transmutation is affected by the ptisia more than by any other plant; for it is known by experiment to be so powerful a