84 



COMMERCE. 



The same alteration was observed in the vegetable produc- 

 tions transplanted in the new world*. The wheat, sown with 

 every precaution, was, in general, merely produdtive of a 

 steril plant, provided with a stem of uncommon thickness. Its 

 culture was therefore in many parts entirely abandoned. The 

 vines did not prosper, although situated in more southern la- 

 titudes than in Europe. The coffee is still so inferior to that 

 of Arabia, that even when mixed with Mocha coffee, it is 

 readily dete(5led, both by the taste and view, by the inhabi- 

 tants of the Levant -f. It has not any sale in Turkey, unless 

 at a very reduced price. The sugars of the Canaries, China, 

 and Egypt, are decidedly preferred to those of Brazil, al- 

 though the latter are esteemed the best in America. 



Accordingly, the aquatic and succulent plants were those 

 which throve in abundance, in a humid and marshy soil, co-r 

 vered with thick forests, and on that account well adapted to 

 the propagation of the immense number of insedls that tor- 

 mented, at each step, the earliest settlers ; since, the seeds of 

 their fecundity being neither dispersed nor destroyed by the 

 impulsion and agitation of the wind, which could not pene- 

 trate into those close retreats, they must have been most ra- 

 pidly and prodigiously multiplied. 



About three centuries of cultivation have partly remedied 

 these defeats. Constant labour, the cutting down of the trees 

 and bushes, the drying up of the lakes, and the warmth of the 

 habitations, have tempered the constitution of the air. The 



* Garcilaso takes occasion to notice this, ki speaking of the cherry-trees brought 

 to Peru in i^Soby a merchant named Caspar Alcozer. 

 t See the History of the English Colonies. 



earth 



