152 
BLUEFIELDS. 
broad leaves expand themselves, and touching each 
other form a surface of the most beautiful green hue, 
which conceals the earth and every thing upon it. 
The English reader may form a very correct idea of 
this useful plant from the Cuckoo-pint, or Lords 
and ladies ” of our hedges, only magnifying the leaves 
to two feet in diameter, and all the rest of the plant 
in proportion. From the midst of this sea of great 
green leaves rise many young Plantain trees in rows, 
already putting forth the great spike of blossom, 
which will soon be thickly studded with whorls of 
close-set fruit. The leaves, five or six feet in length, 
and a foot wide, are noble objects when entire ; 
especially as they are then of a very brilliant light 
green hue ; but each plant rarely can show more than 
a single leaf in this condition, the action of the wind 
soon tearing them up into lateral strips, in the 
direction of the transverse veins. 
In another part of the ground we are reminded of 
the hop-fields of Kent, or the vineyards of France ; 
for the graceful Yam, a plant not inferior in beauty 
to either, twines its slender stems up tall poles, and 
stretches from one to another, making wild natural 
arbours ; while various sorts of pumpkins and melons 
trail over the ground at their feet. Perhaps a little 
patch of Sugar-cane occupies one corner; a few 
bushes of the Castor-oil plant, or of the Cassava, 
another; with two or three Cotton-trees, not the 
lowland giant of that name, but the Malvaceous shrub 
that throws out its snowy bunches of genuine cotton, 
capable of being manufactured into calico ; — but 
a small tract, carefully cultivated and kept free from 
