One Sort, Called Pardelas By The Spaniards,
Burrow In The Ground Like Rabbits, And Are Said To Be Good Eating.
There
are also humming-birds, not much larger than bumble bees, their bills
no thicker than a pin, their legs proportional to their bodies, and
their minute feathers of most beautiful colours.
These are seldom taken
or seen but in the evenings, when they fly about, and they flew
sometimes at night into our fire. There is here a sort of cabbage tree,
of the nature of a palm, producing small cabbages, but very sweet. The
tree is slender and straight, with circular knobs on the stem fourteen
inches above each other, and having no leaves except at the top. The
branches are about twelve feet long, and at about a foot and a half from
the body of the tree begin to shoot out leaves, which are four feet long
and an inch broad, and so regularly placed that the whole branch seems
one entire leaf. The cabbage, which grows out from the bottom of the
branches, is about a foot long and very white; and at the bottom of this
there grow clusters of berries, weighing five or six pounds, like
bunches of grapes, as red as cherries and larger than our black-heart
cherries, each having a large stone in the middle, and the pulp eats
like our haws. These cabbage trees abound about three miles into the
woods, the trunk being often eighty or ninety feet high, and is always
cut down to get the cabbages, which are good eating; but most of them
grow on the tops of the nearest mountains to the great bay.
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