A boat was lowered down, and I went on shore with the botanical gentlemen, to look about the island. It is little better than a bank of sand, upon a basis of coral rock; yet it was covered with shrubs and trees so thickly, that in many places they were impenetrable. The north-western part is entirely sand, but there grew upon it numbers of _pandanus_ trees, similar to those of the east coast of New South Wales; and around many of them was placed a circle of shells of the _chama gigas_, or gigantic cockle, the intention of which excited my curiosity. It appeared that this little island was visited occasionally by the Indians, who obtained from it the fruit of the pandanus, and probably turtle, for the marks of them were seen; and the reef furnishes them with cockles, which are of a superior size here to those we had found upon the reefs of the East Coast. There being no water upon the island, they seem to have hit upon the following expedient to obtain it: Long slips of bark are tied round the smooth stems of the pandanus, and the loose ends are led into the shells of the cockle, placed underneath. By these slips, the rain which runs down the branches and stem of the tree, is conducted into the shells, and fills them at every considerable shower; and as each shell will contain two or three pints, forty or fifty thus placed under different trees will supply a good number of men. A pair of these cockle shells, bleached in the sun, weighed a hundred and one pounds; but still they were much inferior in size to some I have since seen. The fruit of the pandanus, as it is used by these Indians and by the natives of Terra Australis, affords very little nourishment. They suck the bottom part of the drupes, or separated nuts, as we do the leaves of the artichoke; but the quantity of pulp thus obtained, is very small, and to my taste, too astringent to be agreeable. In the third volume of the Asiatic Researches, the fruit of the pandanus is described as furnishing, under the name of _Mellori_, an important article of food to the inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands; and in Mauritius, one of these species is planted for its long and fibrous leaves, of which sacks, mats, and bags for coffee and cotton are in a made.