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 Keer 
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 « part of the coast scarcely known to this 
day.” —Wharton’s Cook. 
