Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/356

298 whole the fertile soil bears no kind of proportion to that which seems by nature doomed to everlasting barrenness.

Water is a scarce article, or at least was so while we were there, which I believe to have been in the very height of the dry season. At some places we were in we saw not a drop, and at the two places where we filled for the ship's use it was done from pools, not brooks. This drought is probably owing to the dryness of a soil almost entirely composed of sand, in which high hills are scarce. That there is plenty, however, in the rainy season is sufficiently evinced by the channels we saw cut even in rocks down the sides of inconsiderable hills: these were in general dry, or if any of them contained water, it was such as ran in the woody valleys, and they seldom carried water above half-way down the hill. Some, indeed, we saw that formed brooks, and ran quite down to the sea; but these were scarce and in general brackish a good way up from the beach.

A soil so barren, and at the same time entirely void of the help derived from cultivation, could not be supposed to yield much to the support of man. We had been so long at sea with but a scanty supply of fresh provisions, that we had long been used to eat everything we could lay our hands upon, fish, flesh, and vegetables, if only they were not poisonous. Yet we could only now and then procure a dish of bad greens for our own table, and never, except in the place where the ship was careened, did we meet with a sufficient quantity to supply the ship. There, indeed, palm cabbage, and what is called in the West Indies Indian kale, were in tolerable plenty; as also was a sort of purslane. The other plants which we ate were a kind of bean (very bad), a kind of parsley, and a plant something resembling spinach, which two last grew only to the southward. I shall give their botanical names, as I believe some of them were never eaten by Europeans before: Indian kale (Arum esculentum), red-flowered purslane (Sesuvium portulacastrum), beans (Glycine speciosa), parsley (Apium), spinach (Tetragonia cornuta).