We found here the palm of three different sorts.  The first, which grows in great plenty to the southward, has leaves that are plaited like a fan:  The cabbage of these is small, but exquisitely sweet; and the nuts, which it bears in great abundance, are very good food for hogs.  The second sort bore a much greater resemblance to the true cabbage-tree of the West Indies:  Its leaves were large and pinnated, like those of the cocoa-nut; and these also produced a cabbage, which, though not so sweet as the other, was much larger.  The third sort, which, like the second, was found only in the northern parts, was seldom more than ten feet high, with small pinnated leaves, resembling those of some kind of fern:  It bore no cabbage, but a plentiful crop of nuts, about the size of a large chesnut, but rounder.  As we found the hulls of these scattered round the places where the Indians had made their fires, we took for granted that they were fit to eat; those however who made the experiment paid dear for their knowledge of the contrary, for they operated both as an emetic and cathartic with great violence.  Still, however, we made no doubt but that they were eaten by the Indians; and judging that the constitution of the hogs might be as strong as theirs, though our own had proved to be so much inferior, we carried them to the stye:  The hogs eat them, indeed, and for some time we thought without suffering any inconvenience; but in about a week they were so much disordered that two of them died, and the rest were recovered with great difficulty.  It is probable, however, that the poisonous quality of these nuts may lie in the juice, like that of the cassada of the West Indies; and that the pulp, when dried, may be not only wholesome, but nutricious.  Besides these species of the palm, and mangroves, there were several small trees and shrubs altogether unknown in Europe; particularly one which produced a very poor kind of fig; another that bore what we called a plum, which it resembled in colour, but not in shape, being flat on the sides like a little cheese; and a third that bore a kind of purple apple, which, after it had been kept a few days, became eatable, and tasted somewhat like a damascene.

Here is a great variety of plants to enrich the collection of a botanist, but very few of them are of the esculent kind.  A small plant, with long, narrow, grassy leaves, resembling that kind of bulrush which in England is called the Cat’s-tail, yields a resin of a bright yellow colour, exactly resembling gambouge, except that it does not stain:  It has a sweet smell, but its properties we had no opportunity to discover, any more than those of many others with which the natives appear to be acquainted, as they have distinguished them by names.

I have already mentioned the root and leaves of a plant resembling the coccos of the West Indies, and a kind of bean; to which may be added, a sort of parsley and purselain, and two kinds of yams; one shaped like a radish, and the other round, and covered with stringy fibres:  Both sorts are very small, but sweet; and we never could find the plants that produced them, though we often saw the places where they had been newly dug up:  It is probable that the drought had destroyed the leaves, and we could not, like the Indians, discover them by the stalks.