Plantanes and bananas are fruit of oblong figure, that I think differ only secundum major & minus, if any, the latter are preferable, and by being less, are juicier; they are usually, when stripped of their coat, eat at meals instead of bread: the leaf of this plantain is an admirable detergent, and, externally applied, I have seen cure the most obstinate scorbutic ulcers.
Manyoco. A root that shoots its branches about the height of a currant bush; from this root the islanders make a farine or flour, which they sell at three ryals a roove, and drive a considerable trade for it with the ships that call in. The manner of making it, is first to press the juice from it, (which is poisonous) done here with engines, and then the Negro women, upon a rough stone, rub it into a granulated flour, reserved in their houses, either to boil, as we do our wheat, and is a hearty food for the slaves; or make it into a bread, fine, white, and well tasted, for themselves. One thing worth taking notice about manioc in this island, is, that the woods abound with a wild poisonous and more mortiferous sort, which sometimes men, unskilled in the preparation of it, feed on to their destruction: this the missionaries assured me they often experimented in their hogs, and believed we did in the mortality of our sailors.
Indian corn, is likewise as well as the farine de manioc and rice, the common victualling of our slave ships, and is afforded here at 1,000 heads for two dollars. This corn grows eight or nine foot high, on a hard reed or stick, shooting forth at every six inches height, some long leaves; it has always an ear, or rather head, at top, of, perhaps, 400-fold increase; and often two, three, or more, midway.
Here are some tamarind trees; another called cola, whose fruit, or nut (about twice the bigness of a chestnut, and bitter) is chewed by the Portuguese, to give a sweet gust to their water which they drink; but above all, I was shown the bark of one (whose name I do not know) gravely affirm’d to have a peculiar property of enlarging the virile member; I am not fond of such conceits, nor believe it in the power of any vegetables, but must acknowledge, I have seen sights of this kind among the Negroes very extraordinary; yet, that there may be no wishes among the ladies for the importation of this bark, I must acquaint them, that they are found to grow less merry, as they increase in bulk. I had like to have forgot their cinnamon trees; there is only one walk of them, and is the entrance of the Governor’s villa; they thrive extreemly well, and the bark not inferior to our cinnamon from India; why they and other spice, in a soil so proper, receive no farther cultivation, is, probably, their suspicion, that so rich a produce, might make some potent neighbour take a fancy to the island.
They have two winters, or rather springs, and two summers: their winters, which are the rainy seasons, come in September and February, or March, and hold two months, returning that fatness and generative power to the earth, as makes it yield a double crop every year, with little sweat or labour.
Hic ver assiduum atque alienis mensibus aestas—bis gravidae pecudes, bis pomis utilis arbos.
Their first coming is with travados, i.e. sudden and hard gusts of wind, with thunder, lightning and heavy showers, but short; and the next new or full moon at those times of the year, infallibly introduces the rains, which once begun, fall with little intermission, and are observed coldest in February. Similar to these are rainy seasons also over all the coast of Africa: if there may be allowed any general way of calculating their time, they happen from the course of the sun, as it respects the equinoctial only; for if these equinoxes prove rainy seasons all over the world (as I am apt to think they are) whatever secret cause operates with that station of the sun to produce them, will more effectually do it in those vicine latitudes; and therefore, as the sun advances, the rains are brought on the Whydah and Gold Coast, by April, and on the windwardmost part of Guinea by May: the other season of the sun’s returning to the southward, make them more uncertain and irregular in northern Africa; but then to the southward again, they proceed in like manner, and are at Cape Lopez in October, at Angola in November, etc.
The manner of living among the Portuguese here is, with the utmost frugality and temperance, even to penury and starving; a familiar instance of proof is, in the voracity of their dogs, who finding such clean cupboards at home, are wild in a manner with hunger, and tear up the graves of the dead for food, as I have often seen: they themselves are lean with covetousness, and that Christian virtue, which is often the result of it, self-denial; and would train up their cattle in the same way, could they fetch as much money, or had not they their provision more immediately of providence. The best of them (excepting the Governor now and then) neither pay nor receive any visits of escapade or recreation; they meet and sit down at each other’s doors in the street every evening, and as few of them, in so small an island, can have their plantations at any greater distance, than that they may see it every day if they will, so the subject of their talk is mostly how affairs went there, with their Negroes, or their ground, and then part with one another innocently, but empty.
The Negroes have yet no hard duty with them, they are rather happy in slavery; for as their food is chiefly vegetables, that could no way else be
