HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 121 
and swallow them up before us, notwithstanding our utmost endeavours to obstruct 
their voracity. 
“ There is also a nocturnal lizard, of a grayish colour, and a very unpleasing 
shape : it is as thick and as long as a man’s arm, and its flesh is not unpalatable: 
it is fond of the latanier. 
“ A quantity of salt may be collected from the holes of the high rocks on the 
coast, sufficient to supply the island if it were inhabited in every part. The sea 
water is driveff into these cavities by the force of the waves, and the sun, that 
universal chemist of nature, converts it into salt. 
“ The sea also brought yellow amber, and ambergris: we found a large piece 
of the latter, of whose name and qualities we were altogether ignorant, and which 
was the cause of all our subsequent misfortunes, as will be hereafter related. We 
also found large quantities of bitumen, which we denominated amber, though it 
might -more properly be considered as jet. 
Sf This island produces a flower of a most agreeable odour: it is white as the 
lilly, and resembles in shape the common jessamine: it grows chiefly on the 
trunks of trees which are so decayed as to have become a kind of earthy sub¬ 
stance; the fragrance of these flowers is perceptible at the distance of an hundred 
yards. 
" The air of Rodriguez is obnoxious both to lice and fleas, an effect which we 
practically experienced after our landing on it: neither are there any of those stinging 
flies and other small insects, that in many places are so troublesome, or rather so 
insupportable, during the night*. 
“ In the small islands which have been already mentioned as the asylums and 
breeding places of the pigeons, there is an infinite number of sea-birds. Their 
flesh is neither palatable nor wholesome, but their eggs possess both those qualities. 
These birds are so numerous, that, when they take their flight, the air is sometimes 
darkened by them. 
" They hatch on the sand, and so near to each other that they are in absolute 
contact, though of different kinds : they were so fearless of us that they would not 
move from before us, till they were forced from their situation. They lay three 
times in the course of the year, but never produce more than one egg at each 
* This is the more extraordinary, as musquitoes are very troublesome in the Isle of France: 
■this difference probably proceeds from the large quantity of wood-land there. 
R 
