Page:A general history of the pyrates, from their first rise and settlement in the Island of Providence, to the present time (1724).djvu/209

 burrough in thee andy Soils like Rabbets, and are as hy.

The Iland is a pleaant Intermixture of Hill and Valley; the Hills pread with Palms, Coco-Nuts, and Cotton-Trees, with Numbers of Monkeys and Parrots among them; the Valleys with fruitful Plantations of Yamms, Kulalu, Papas, Variety of Sallating, Ananas, or Pine-Apples, Guavas, Plantanes, Bonanas, Manyocos, and Indian Corn; with Fowls, Guinea Hens, Mucovy Ducks, Goats, Hogs, Turkies, and wild Beefs, with each a little Village of Negroes, who, under the Direction of their everal Maters, manage the Cultivation, and exchange or ell them for Money, much after the ame Rates with the People of St. Thome.

I hall run a Decription of the Vegetables, with their Properties, not only becaue they are the Produce of this Iland, but mot of them of Africa in general.

The Palm-Trees are numerous on the Shores of Africa, and may be reckoned the firt of their natural Curioities, in that they afford them Meat, Drink and Cloathing; they grow very traight to 40 and 50 Foot high, and at the top (only) have 3 or 4 Circles of Branches, that pread and make a capacious Umbrella. The Trunk is very rough with Knobs, either Excrecencies, or the Healings of thoe Branches that were lopped off to forward the Growth of the Tree, and make it anwer better in its Fruit. The Branches are trongly tied together with a Cortex, which may be unravelled to a coniderable Length and Breadth; the inward Lamella of this Cortex, I know are wove like a Cloath at Benin, and afterwards died and worn: Under the Branches, and cloe to the Body of the Tree, hang the Nuts, thirty Bunches perhaps on a Tree, and each of thirty Pound Weight, with prickly Films from between them, not Rh