Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/400

342 palms that I have seen—requires a poetical imagination to describe, and a mind not unacquainted with such sights to conceive.

The productions of this island are buffaloes, sheep, hogs, fowls, horses, asses, maize, guinea corn, rice, calevances, limes, oranges, mangroves, plantains, water-melons, tamarinds, sweet sops (Annona), blimbi (Averrhoa bilimbi), besides cocoanuts and fan-palms, which last are in sufficient quantity, should all other crops fail, to support the whole island, people, stock, and all, who have at times been obliged to live upon its sugar, syrup, and wines for some months. We saw also a small quantity of European garden herbs, as celery, marjoram, fennel, and garlic, and one single sugarcane. Besides these necessaries, it has for the supply of luxury betel and areca, tobacco, cotton, indigo, and a little cinnamon, only planted for curiosity, said Mr. Lange; indeed, I almost doubt whether or not it was genuine cinnamon, as the Dutch have been always so careful not to trust any spices out of their proper islands. Besides these were probably other things which we had not an opportunity of seeing, and which Mr. Lange forgot or did not choose to mention.

All their produce is in amazing abundance, so we judged at least from the plantations we saw, though this year every crop had failed for want of rain. Most of them are well known to Europeans: I shall, however, spend a little ink in describing such only as are not, or as differ at all in appearance from those commonly known. To begin then with buffaloes, of which they have got good store; these beasts differ from our cattle in Europe in their ears, which are considerably larger, in their skins, which are almost without hair, and in their horns, which, instead of bending forwards as ours do, bend directly backwards, and also in their total want of dewlaps. We saw some of these as big as well-sized European oxen, and some there must be much larger; so at least I was led to believe by a pair of horns which I measured: they were from tip to tip 3 feet 9½ inches, across their widest diameter 4 feet 1½ inch; the whole