l6gi.] PEPPER AND DRIFT COCOS. 65 



and between the Stalks of its broad Leaves, is a sort of 

 Cotton of a Limon Colour, which all thro' India is known by 

 the name of Cajjoc} We made very good Quilts {niatdas) of it. 

 It may be Wove, and Manufactur'd for all the Uses that 

 Cotton is put to : Perhaps we might have thought of making 

 a sort of stuff, both of the Capoc and the Fibers of our Plan- 

 tane Leaves ; but we had Stuff enough of our own to serve a 

 long time, and the Air is so mild, so sweet, that we did not 

 make much use of our Cloaths. Happy for us had we sav'd 

 them ; for the time when the Persecution of a New giv'n of 

 Gocl^ whom we shall speak of expos'd us to a thousand 

 Miseries on the fatal Rock, whither that wicked Man banish'd 

 us. 



There are several other kinds of Trees in this Island, 

 which yield tolerable Pruit. Those that bear a sort of 

 Pepper,^ are not a little like Plum-trees of a moderate size : 

 Their Leaves are much like that of the Jessamine ; they bear 

 their Fruit in little Bunches, and it did very well in our 

 Sauces. 



The Sea having thrown us up some Cocos which began to 

 bud, we planted some of that Fruit some Months after our 

 Arrival, and when we left the Place, the Trees were four 

 Foot high. 



1 leave it to the Pieader to guess how these Cocoes/ some 



1 " Capoc, a sort of cotton so fine and so short that it cannot be spun. 

 It is used in the East Indies to line palanquins, and to make beds, 

 mattresses, cushions, pillows, etc. (Rees' Cydopiedia.) 



2 A play on the name of Diodati, or Deodate, the Governor in 

 Mauritius, who subsequently persecuted and imprisoned Leguat. 



3 Professor Balfour supposes this plant to have been either Capsicum 

 frutesceris, abundant everywhere in the island, or C. cordiforme, not 

 common (Z. c, pp. 303, 360). But it seems scarcely probable that 

 Leguat's pepper was a capsicum, which bears a long, pod-like fruit or 

 seed, whereas he compares that of his plant to a small plum. 



* A few trees of Cocos nucifera occur in the compound of Government 

 House at Port Mathurin. Leguat's remark that the cocoa-nuts thrown 

 up on his island came from St. Brandon, better known as the Cargados 



F 



