201 



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

 like the chamserops 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 fi "om 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. 



