1770. ROUND THE WORLD. 205 



recovered with great difficulty. It is probable, how- 

 ever, 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 nutritious. Besides these spe- 

 cies 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 

 rig ; 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 col- 

 lection 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 distin- 

 guished 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 co- 

 vered 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. 



Most of the fruits of this country, such as they 

 are, have been mentioned already. We found one in 



