LEAVE THE ISLAND. 27 



Date palms were very numerous in the vicinity 

 of the town, but did not appear to attain any 

 high degree of perfection, or bear fruit, and 

 were used, for what they alone seemed fit, as 

 firewood. 



The troops were decently clad, and consisted 

 of about five hundred, principally negroes and 

 mulattoes, officered by Europeans. 



All arrangements having been completed, we 

 left the island in the evening, with a fine north- 

 east trade breeze. 



was soon placed among the regalia of the Spanish crown. 

 This excited the attention of the Portuguese, who collected 

 it without restriction in the Cape de Verd Islands, Madeira, 

 Porto Santo, and the Azores. In the year 1730, the Jesuits 

 asked of King John V. the privilege of collecting the 

 Hervinha secca ; but the crown took the advantage into its 

 own hands, and farmed the right of collecting it. At a later 

 period the lichen was ceded to the mercantile company of 

 Gram Para and Maranhao; and, lastly, in the year 1790, the 

 government again took this branch of commerce under its 

 own care, because it had declined considerably under the 

 bad management of the company. At present the exporta- 

 tion is small ; but more considerable, however, from the 

 Cape de Verd Isles. (See I. Da Silva Feijo, in the Memorias 

 Economicas da Acad, de Lisboa, vol. v. 1815, p. 143.) — 

 Spix and Martins Travels in Brazil, vol. i. p. 125. 



