CHAP, i.] WEST INDIES. ' 15 



tation. Then, indeed, the fairest of the islands be- 

 came so many frightful solitudes ; impervious and un- 

 wholesome. Such was the condition of Jamaica when 

 wrested from the Spanish crown in 1655, and such is 

 the condition of great part of Cuba and Porto Rico at 

 this day ; for the infinitely wise and benevolent Go- 

 vernor of the universe, to compel the exertion of those 

 faculties which he has given us, has ordained, that by 

 human cultivation alone, the earth becomes the pro- 

 per habitation of man.f 



But as the West Indian islands in their ancient state 

 \vere not without culture, so neither were they gene- 

 rally noxious to health. The plains or savannas were 

 regularly sown, twice in the year, with that species 

 of grain which is now well known in Europe by the 

 name of Turkey wheat. It was called by the Indians 

 mahez, or maize, a name it still bears in all the islands, 

 and does not require very laborious cultivation. This 

 however constituted but a part only, and not the most 

 considerable part, of the vegetable food of the natives. 

 As these countries were at the same time extremely 

 populous, both the hills and the vallies (of the small- 

 er islands especially) were necessarily cleared of un- 



f- Dr. Lind, in his " Essay on the Diseases of Hot Climates," has 

 preserved an extract from the journal of an officer who sailed up a river 

 on the coast of Guinea, which affords a striking illustration of this re- 

 mark: " We were (says the officer) thirty miles distant from tiie sta, 

 " in a country altogether uncultivated, overflowed with water, surround- 

 " ed with thick impenetrable woods, and overrun with slime. The air 

 " was so vitiated, noisome, and thick, that cur torches and candles burnt, 

 tc dim, and seemed ready to be extinguished j and even the human voice 

 " lost its natural tone.'"'' Part I. p. 64.. 



