PACIFIC AND BEERING’S STRAIT. 
135 
nasturtium, sesuvium of Pitcairn Island, the eugenia, and scaevola CHAF. 
koenigii; and close down to the shore a convolvulus covering the 
hrown rock with its clusters of leaves and pink blossoms. The porou jan. 
9^nd miroe (Thespesia populariaj were more abundant. The nono not 
common. They must also have the auti and amai, as their weapons 
nre made of it, though we did not see it. The timber of which their 
J'afts are constructed is a red wood, somewhat porous, and of softer grain 
than the amai. Some of these trunks are so large as at first to excite a 
suspicion of their having been drifted from a more extensive shore ; 
kut the quantity which they possess, several logs of which were newly 
shaped out, affords every reason for believing that it is the produce of 
their own valleys. They are not deficient in variety of edible fruits 
aud roots, nor in those kinds which are most productive and nutritious, 
besides the tee-plant, sweet potatoe, appe, sugar-cane, water-melon. 
Cocoa-nut, plantain, and banana, they possess the bread-fruit, which 
Otaheite is the staff of life, and the taro, a root which in utility cor- 
responds with it in the Sandwich Islands. Were they to pay but a due 
regard to the cultivation of the two last of these valuable productions, 
abundance of wholesome food might be substituted for the nauseous 
fixture mahie, which, though it may, as indeed it does, support life. 
Cannot be said to do more. Hats and lizards were the only quadrupeds 
saw upon the islands. Of the feathered tribe, oceanic birds form 
the greater part ; but even these are rare, compared with the numbers 
^kat usually frequent the islands of the Pacific, arising, no doubt, from 
^ke Gambier Islands being inhabited. The whole consist of three kinds 
cf tern, the white, black, and slate-coloured — of which the first are most 
^lUmerous, and the last very scarce ; together with a species of procellaria, 
the white heron, and the tropic and egg birds. Those which frequent 
tfie shore are a kind of pharmatopus, curlew, charadrine, and tetanus ; 
^Rd the woods, the wood-pigeon, and a species of turdus, somewhat 
Resembling a thrush in plumage, but smaller, possessing a similar though 
less harmonious note. The insects found here were very few, the com- 
mon house-fly excepted, which on almost all the inhabited islands in 
tke Pacific is extremely numerous and annoying. Of fish there is a 
great variety, and many are extremely beautiful in colour; as well those 
