ll* STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF THE 



The Europeans are a conceited people. They read ; and 

 they fancy that every thing can be known from books. They 



" They turned out to work a little before sunrise, had half an hour to break- 

 fast and two hours to dinner ; the days are generally twelve hours long, as the 

 sun rises and sets with very little variation through the year at six o'clock ; 

 and one English labourer would do as much as three of them. 



They had each a lot of land, a«d a sufficient time allowed to plant provi- 

 sions, and clean tlieir ground. They have two or three crops of corn in some 

 parts in the year ; and abundance of plantains, which, when established, with 

 a little care in keeping them clear from weeds, will continue bearing for twenty 

 years, and are a good, wholesome, substantial food. They raise potatoes, of 

 which there are six or seven different sorts, all very good food, and several 

 sorts of yams, which weigh from five pounds to fifty pounds weight, toyas, or 

 cocoas, several kind, as monkey, black, two good, Otaheite and white cocoa, 

 the middle leaves of the last eat like spinnage, and the roots better than English 

 potatoes ; sweet and bitter casava, tlie latter they grate and press out the juice, 

 which is poison, the flour is made into cakes, tlie same way nearly that oat-cakes 

 are made, and eat much better. They had good comfortable houses to dwell 

 in, and reared pigs and abundance of poultry. Each family had a garden, 

 well stocked with pease, beans, of which there are a vast variety, and some 

 will bear for a number of years ; plenty of greens, pine apples, melons, pome- 

 granates, pumpkins, sour sops, sweet sops, and numerous other fruits, and 

 growed a good deal of tobacco, and oil nuts, which they make the castor oil 

 from- I assert it was customary then, I am speaking of twenty-one years ago, 

 for a negro to sell provisions, garden stuff, tobacco, &c. out of his own 

 grounds, to a greater amount than the generality of the journeymen labourer's 

 or mechanic's wages in England, Scotland, and Ireland. And I no where saw 

 such wretched outcasts «s our beggars, and poorer sort of people in England, 



