on the same tree may be seen continually flowers and fruits of all
sizes. The cocoa-nut affords, as everyone knows, nutritious food,
and when pressed yields a quantity of oil. The shell of the nut
serves to make vases, and the filamentary parts are spun into ropes
and cables for ships, and even into coarse clothing. The leaves are
used to make baskets and brooms, and for thatching the huts.

A liquor is also taken from the cocoa-nut tree, called cocoa-wine;
it is a most stupifying drink, of which the Indians make great use
at their festivities. To produce the cocoa-wine, large groves of
the cocoa-trees are laid out, from which merely the sap or juice
is expected, but nothing in the shape of fruit. These trees have
long bamboos laid at their tops from one to another, on which the
Indians pass over every morning, bearing large vessels, in which they
collect the liquid. It is a laborious and dangerous employment,--a
real promenade in the air, at the height of from sixty to eighty
feet from the ground. It is from the bud which ought to produce the
flower that the liquid is drawn of which the spirit is afterwards
made. As soon as the bud is about to burst, the Indian employed in
collecting the liquid ties it very tight, a few inches from its point,
and then cuts across the point beyond the tying. From this cutting,
or from the pores which are left uncovered, a saccharine liquid
flows, which is sweetish and agreeable to the palate before it has
fermented. After it has passed the fermentation it is carried to the
still, and submitted to the process of distillation, it then becomes
the alcoholic liquor known in the country as cocoa-wine.

Besides these uses, the cocoa-nut shell, when burned, gives the fine
black colour which the Indians make use of to dye their straw hats.

The banana is an herbaceous plant, without any woody matter: the
trunk of each is formed of leaves placed one above the other. This
trunk rises from twelve to fifteen feet from the ground, and then
spreads out into long broad leaves, not less than five or six feet
each. From the middle of these leaves the flower rises, and also the
spike (regime). By this word is to be understood a hundred of large
bananas growing from the same stalk, forming together a long branch,
that turns towards the sun.

Before the fruit has reached its full ripeness, the spike is cut, and
becomes fit for use. The part of the plant which is in the earth is
a kind of large root, f