LITTLE CULTIVATION. 9^5 



dently to prevent passengers from sinking in the 

 mud. The smaller houses were partly examined, 

 but they did not differ in structure from the one 

 described in page 228, although several of them 

 were a good deal larger. The tails of some 

 birds of paradise and the skull of a crocodile 

 were seen, but I did not hear of them till we had 

 got on board again, or should certainly have brought 

 them off. We nowhere saw any sign or fragment 

 of European articles or workmanship, nor iron of 

 any sort or kind. There was little or no cultiva- 

 tion near the houses. Ripe cocoa-nuts were hang- 

 ing on some rails, apparently to dry, and in one spot 

 the earth had been dug and heaped up into a cir- 

 cular mound, with a trench round it, and on this 

 some young plants had been set, but what they were 

 we could not tell. There were only one or two 

 plantain or banana trees, but a dense thicket of sago- 

 palms grew all round in the forest. 



After a much more hasty and cursory examination 

 than I could have wished to give to this very in- 

 teresting place, we returned to the boats with our 

 spoils.* Of these the most precious part in our eyes 



* When we came to re-embark, on trying the muskets, hardly 

 one of them would go off. All our clothes were of course satu- 

 rated with wet, and the rain running down the stock and barrel 

 of the muskets and fowling-pieces, accumulated about the base 

 of the nipple, and was drawn by capillary attraction up inside 

 the percussion cap, and had wetted the powder in the tube of 

 the nipple. For all boat work and rough work, where the 

 musket is wanted always ready, but cannot be solely attended to, 



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