Corisco. 
257 
barracoon destroyed by the British in 1840. 
During the last seven years the “ patriarchal in¬ 
stitution” has become extinct, and the old slavers 
who have at times touched at the island, have left 
it empty-handed. Corisco had long been celebrated 
for cam-wood, a hard and ponderous growth, 
yielding a better red than Brazil or Braziletto, alias 
Brazilete ( Brasilettia , De Cand.) one of the Eu- 
ccEsalpiniece , a congener of C. Echinata , which pro¬ 
duces the Brazil-wood or Pernambuco-wood of 
commerce. In 1679, the Hollander Governor- 
General of Minas sent some forty whites to culti¬ 
vate “ Indian wheat and other sort of corn and 
plants of Guinea.” The design was to supply the 
Dutch West Indian Company’s ships with grain 
and vegetables, especially bananas, which grow ad¬ 
mirably ; I heard that there are fifteen varieties 
upon this dot of dry land. Thus the crews would 
not waste time and money at Cape Lopez and the 
Portuguese islands. The Dutch colonists began by 
setting up a factory in a turf redoubt, armed with 
iron guns, “ the better to secure themselves from 
any surprise or assault of the few natives, who are 
a sort of wild and mischievous blacks.” The 
plantation was successful, but the bad climate and 
noxious gases from the newly turned ground, com¬ 
bined with over-exertion, soon killed some seven¬ 
teen out of the forty; and the remainder, who also 
suffered from malignant distempers, razed their 
1. 
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