rranged the
fruits on the trunk of a tree, which served for a table, and did great
credit to the talent of their instructress.

"I should have liked to have offered you coffee," said Madame Hirtel,
"which grows in this island, but having no utensils for roasting,
grinding, or preparing it, it has been useless to me, and I have not
even gathered it."

"Do you think, my dear, that it would grow in our island?" said my wife
to me, in some anxiety.

I then recollected, for the first time, how fond my wife was of coffee,
which, in Europe, had always been her favourite breakfast. There would
certainly be in the ship some bags, which I might have brought away; but
I had never thought of it, and my unselfish wife, not seeing it, had
never named it, except once wishing we had some to plant in the garden.
Now that there was a probability of obtaining it, she confessed that
coffee and bread were the only luxuries she regretted. I promised to try
and cultivate it in our island; foreseeing, however, that it would
probably not be of the best quality, I told her she must not expect
Mocha; but her long privation from this delicious beverage had made her
less fastidious, and she assured me it would be a treat to her. After
breakfast, we begged Madame Hirtel to resume her interesting narrative.
She continued:

"After the reflections on my situation, which I told you of last night,
I determined only to return to the sea-shore, when our food failed us in
the woods; but I acquired other means of procuring it. Encouraged by
the success of my fishing, I made a sort of net from the filaments of
the bark of a tree and a plant resembling hemp. With these I succeeded
in catching some birds: one, resembling our thrush, was very fat, and of
delicious flavour. I had the greatest difficulty in overcoming my
repugnance to taking away their life; nothing but the obligation of
preserving our own could have reconciled me to it. My children plucked
them; I then spitted them on a slender branch and roasted them before
the fire. I also found some nests of eggs, which I concluded were those
of the wild ducks which frequented our stream. I made myself acquainted
with all the fruits which the monkeys and parroquets eat, and which were
not out of my reach. I found a sort of acorn which had the flavour of a
nut. The children also discovered plenty of large strawberries, a
delicious repast; and I found a quantity of honeycomb in the hollow of a
tree, which I