CHAP.  V.

Of their Roots, Plants, Herbs, Flowers.

[Roots for Food.] Some of these are for Food, and some for Medicine.  I begin with their Roots, which with the Jacks before mentioned, being many, and generally bearing well, are a great help towards the sustenance of this People.  These by the Chingulays by a general name are called Alloes, by the Portugals and us Inyames.  They are of divers and sundry sorts, some they plant, and some grow wild; those that grow wild in the Woods are as good, onely they are more scarce and grow deeper, and so more difficult to be plucked up.  It would be to no purpose to mention their particular names; I shall onely speak a little in general of them.  They serve both for Food, and for Carrees, that is, sauce, or for a relish to their Rice.  But they make many a meal of them alone to lengthen out their Rice, or for want of it:  and of these there is no want to those that will take pains but to set them, and cheap enough to those that will, buy.

[The manner of their growing.] There are two sorts of these Alloes; some require Trees or Sticks to run up on; others require neither.  Of the former sort, some will run up to the tops of very large Trees, and spread out very full of branches, and bear great bunches of blossoms, but no use made of them; The Leaves dy every year, but the Roots grow still, which some of them will do to a prodigious bigness within a Year or two’s time, becoming as big as a mans wast.  The fashion of them somewhat roundish, rugged and uneven, and in divers odd shapes, like a log of cleft wood:  they have a very good, savoury mellow tast.

Of those that do not run up on Trees, there are likewise sundry sorts; they bear a long stalk and a broad leaf; the fashion of these Roots are somewhat roundish, some grow out like a mans fingers, which they call Angul-alloes, as much as to say Finger-Roots; some are of a white colour, some of a red.

Those that grow in the Woods run deeper into the Earth, they run up Trees also.  Some bear blossoms somewhat like Hopps, and they may be as big as a mans Arm.

[Boyling Herbs.] For Herbs to boyl and eat with Butter they have excellent good ones, and several sorts:  some of them are six months growing to maturity, the stalk as high as a man can reach, and being boyled almost as good as Asparagus.  There are of this sort, some having leaves and stalks as red as blood, some green:  some the leaves green, and the stalk very white.

[Fruits for sawce.] They have several other sorts of Fruits which they dress and eat with their Rice, and tast very savoury, called Carowela, Wattacul, Morongo, Cacorebouns, &c. the which I cannot compare to any things that grow here in England.

[European Herbs and Plants among them.] They have of our English Herbs and Plants, Colworts, Carrots, Radishes, Fennel, Balsam, Spearmint, Mustard.  These, excepting the two last, are not the natural product of the Land, but they are transplanted hither:  By which I perceive all other European Plants would grow there:  They have also Fern, Indian Corn.  Several sorts of Beans as good as these in England:  right Cucumhers, Calabasses, and several sorts of Pumkins, &c.  The Dutch on that Island in their Gardens have Lettice, Rosemary, Sage, and all other Herbs and Sallettings that we have in these Countreys.