328 AUSTRALIA TO SAVU ISLAND CHAP, xiv 



la Colta de Santa Bonaventura, as it is called in the French 

 charts, about nine or ten leagues to the southward of Ke&r 

 Weer} We were not ashore altogether more than two hours, 

 so cannot be expected to have made many observations. 



The soil had all the appearance of the highest fertility, 

 being covered with a prodigious quantity of trees, which 

 seemed to thrive luxuriantly. Notwithstanding this, the 

 cocoanut trees bore very small fruit, and the plantains did 

 not seem very thriving. The only bread-fruit tree that we 

 saw was, however, very large and healthy. There was very 

 little variety of plants ; we saw only twenty -three species, 

 every one of which was known to us, unless two may prove 

 upon comparison to be different from any of the many 

 species of Cyperus we have still undetermined from New 

 Holland. Had we had axes to cut down the trees, or 

 could we have ventured into the woods, we should doubtless 

 have found more, but we had only an opportunity of examin- 

 ing the beach and edge of the wood. I am of opinion, how- 

 ever, that the country does not abound in variety of species, 

 as I have been in no one before where I could not, on a 

 good soil, have gathered many more with the same time and 

 opportunity. 



The people, as well as we could judge, were nearly of the 

 same colour as the New Hollanders ; some thought rather 

 lighter. They were certainly stark naked. The arms which 

 they used against us were very light, ill -made darts of 

 bamboo cane, pointed with hard wood, in which were many 

 barbs. They perhaps shot them with bows, but I am of 

 opinion that they threw them with a stick something in the 

 manner of the New Hollanders. They came about sixty 

 yards beyond us, but not in a point-blank direction. 

 Besides these, many among them, maybe a fifth part of the 

 whole, had in their hands a short piece of stick, perhaps a 

 hollow cane, which they swing sideways from them, and 

 immediately fire flew from it perfectly resembling the flash 

 and smoke of a musket, and of no longer duration. For 



1 Cook and Banks landed "on a part of the coast scarcely known to this 

 day." Wharton's Cook. 



