VOYAGE TO THE SOUTH SEAS.
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water bay. Though there is a great plenty of wood, that which is near the ſhore, is not large enough for any purpoſe, but to uſe as fire-wood. In the mountains the trees may be of a larger ſize, as they grow to the ſummit of them. I do not think that the watering-place which we ſaw, is the only one on the iſland; and I have no doubt, if wells were dug any where beneath the hills, that it would be found in great plenty; they muſt be made, however, at ſome diſtance from the ſandy beach, as within a few yards behind them, is a large lagoon of ſalt water, from three to eight feet in depth, which riſes and falls with the tide; and in a few hours a channel might be cut into it. The woods abound with tortoiſes, doves, and guanas, and the lagoons with teal. The earth produces wild mint, ſorrel, and a plant reſembling the cloth-tree of Otaheite and the Sandwich Iſles, whoſe leaves are an excellent ſubſtitute for the China tea, and was indeed preferred to it by my people as well as myſelf. There are many other kinds of trees, particularly the moli-tree, mentioned by Mr. Falkner, and the algarrooa, but that which abounds, in a ſuperior degree, is the cotton tree. There is great plenty of every kind of fiſh that inhabit the tropical Latitudes; mullet, devil-fiſh, and green turtle were in great abundance. But all the luxuries of the ſea, yielded to that which the iſland afforded us in the land tortoiſe,
