The Shell Of This Nut Makes Very Pretty Drinking Cups, And It
Also Burns Well, Making A Fierce Hot Fire.
Thus the cocoa-tree affords
meat, drink, oil, clothing, houses, firing, and rigging for ships.
The plantain-tree is only about thirteen or fourteen feet high and
four feet round, its leaves being eight or nine feet long and two broad,
ending in a round point. The fruit grows at the bottom of the leaves, on
a great stalk, in a pod about eight inches long and the size of a black
pudding, being of a fine yellow colour, often speckled with red. The
inside of this is white, but the plantain itself is yellow like butter,
and as soft as a pear. There sometimes grow fifty or sixty of these pods
on one stalk, and five or six stalks on one tree. They are an excellent
fruit, and most parts of the East and West Indies abound with them. The
banana tree is much the same with the plantain, but the fruit is only
about six inches long, fifty or sixty of them growing on one stalk, and
is extraordinarily mellow, sweet, and good.
We left the bay of Atacames on the 31st July, accompanied by our prize
the Dragon, and passing the Bay of Panama, came to the Bay of Nicoya on
the 16th August, in lat 9 deg. 30'N. in which we anchored near certain
islands near the centre of the bay, called Middle Islands, where we
careened.
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