The cocoa-tree is generally from fifty to an hundred feet high, and for the most part straight and slender.  The leaves are four fathoms, or four and a half long, at the very top of the tree, and serve excellently for thatching houses.  At the bottom of the leaves the cocoa nuts grow in clusters of ten, fifteen, or twenty, hanging by a small string which is full of joints.  Each nut, with its outer rind, is larger than a man’s head, and within this outer rind is a hard woody shell which will hold near a quart of liquid.  The nut or kernel lines the inside of this shell, and within this kernel is about a pint and half of pure clear water, very cool, sweet, and pleasant.  The kernel also is very good and pleasant; but when old, we scrape it all down, and soak it in about a quart of fresh water for three or four hours, which is then strained, and has both the colour and taste of milk, and will even throw up a thick head not unlike cream.  This milk, when boiled with rice, is accounted very wholesome and nourishing by the doctors, and was given to our sick men.  When the nut is very old, the kernel of itself turns to oil, which is often used to fry with, but mostly for burning in lamps.  The outer end of the nuts may be applied to the purposes of flax, and of it the natives make a kind of linen, and it is also manufactured into ropes and cables, which are sold in most parts of America and the West Indies.  The shell of this nut makes very pretty drinking cups, and it also burns well, making a fierce hot fire.  Thus the cocoa-tree affords meat, drink, oil, clothing, houses, firing, and rigging for ships.

The plantain-tree is only about thirteen or fourteen feet high and four feet round, its leaves being eight or nine feet long and two broad, ending in a round point.  The fruit grows at the bottom of the leaves, on a great stalk, in a pod about eight inches long and the size of a black pudding, being of a fine yellow colour, often speckled with red.  The inside of this is white, but the plantain itself is yellow like butter, and as soft as a pear.  There sometimes grow fifty or sixty of these pods on one stalk, and five or six stalks on one tree.  They are an excellent fruit, and most parts of the East and West Indies abound with them.  The banana tree is much the same with the plantain, but the fruit is only about six inches long, fifty or sixty of them growing on one stalk, and is extraordinarily mellow, sweet, and good.

We left the bay of Atacames on the 31st July, accompanied by our prize the Dragon, and passing the Bay of Panama, came to the Bay of Nicoya on the 16th August, in lat 9 deg. 30’N. in which we anchored near certain islands near the centre of the bay, called Middle Islands, where we careened.  While here, Mr Clippington, the chief mate, having quarrelled with Captain Dampier, drew over twenty-one men to his party, and making himself master of the bark, in which was all our ammunition and the best part of our provisions, hoisted anchor, and went without the islands, whence he sent us word that he would put ashore at an Indian house all our powder, shot, and other ammunition, reserving only what was necessary for his own use, which he did accordingly, and we sent our canoes to fetch it on board.