201 



perature of the year is not below 30°*. It is, 

 like the chamaerops ot the basin of the Medi- 

 terranean, a true palm-tree of the coast. It 

 prefers salt to fresh waters, and flourishes less 

 inland, where the air is not loaded with saline 

 particles, than on the coasts. When cocoa- 

 trees are planted in Terra Firma, or in the Mis- 

 sions of the Oroonoko, at a distance from the 

 sea, a considerable quantity of salt, sometimes 

 as much as half a bushel, is thrown into the 

 hole that receives the cocoa-nut. Among the 

 plants cultivated by man, the sugar-cane, the 

 plantain, the mammee-apple. and alligator-pear 

 (laurus persea), alone have the property of the 

 cocoa-tree ; that of being watered alike with 

 fresh and salt water. This circumstance is 

 favourable to their migrations ; and if the su- 

 gar-cane of the shore yield a sirup that is a 

 little brackish, it is believed at the same time 

 to be better fitted for the distillation of spirit, 

 than the juice produced from the canes in the 

 interior. 



The cocoa-tree, in the rest of America, is in 

 general cultivated around farm-houses, to be 

 eaten as fruit ; in the Gulf of Cariaco, it forms 

 real plantations. At Cumana, they talk of a 



* The cocoa-tree grows in the northern hemisphere from 

 the equator to the latitude of 28°. Near the equator we find 

 it from the plains to 700 toises of elevation above the level of 

 the sea. 



