1691.] AMBER AND AMBERGRIS. 87 



Colour, and very ugly ; tliey are as big aud as long as ones 

 Arm, their Flesh is not very bad, they love Plantanes. We 

 found Salt enough in holes on the Eocks upon our Coasts,. 

 and had the Island been full of Inhabitants, they might have 

 been supply'd there. The Waves throw up the Sea-water 

 in their Agitation, and the Sun, that admirable Workman of 

 all the Metamorphoses of Nature, turns it into Salt. The 

 Sea brings yellow Amber and Ambergreece.^ We found a 

 great piece of the latter^ which we did not know, and which 

 prov'd the cause of all the Misfortunes that happen'd to us 

 afterwards, as will be related in the sequel of this History. 

 We found also abundance of a sort of black Bitumen, to 

 which we gave the name of Amber, but I believe 'tis pro- 

 perly Jet. 



There's a certain admirable Flower^ in this Island, which 

 I shou'd prefer to Spanish Jessamine, 'tis as white as a Lily, 

 and shap'd something like common Jessamine. It grows 

 particularly out of the Trunks of rotten Trees, when they 



1 " La mer apporte cle I'ambre jaune, & de I'ambre gris." The 

 Arabic term Amler was first given to the remarkable secretion formed 

 in the intestines of the spermaceti whak^, and subsequently to the 

 fossilised gum now generally known by that term. These two sub- 

 stances, both mysterious products of the sea, were, in the seventeenth 

 century, distinguished only by their colour as amhve gris aud amhre 

 jaune. Ben Jonson asks — 



"Why do you smell of ambergrise, 

 Of which was formed Neptune's niece ?" 



{^Neptune's Triumph.) 

 Whilst Milton speaks of game — 



" In pastry built, or from the spit or boiled 

 Gris-amber steam'd." 



(Paradise Regained.) 



2 A marked feature in the Flora, Trofessor Balfour states {op. cit., 

 IX 30 i}, is the paucity of Orcliidacese. Only four species have been 

 determined ; a fifth, a species of Angrsecum, was found, but in too im- 

 perfect a state for identification. Professor Balfour knows of no plant 

 on the island answering to Leguat's description, and can only suppose it 

 to refer to some species of orchid, which has now passed away. A sweet- 

 smelling orchid, Angrasciimfragrans., is found in the Mascarene Islands. 



