n reasonable abundance. They are ripe in September and
October. We carried some with us green to sea, which, were six weeks in
ripening. Guinea pepper grows wild in the woods on a small plant like
_privet_, having small slender leaves, the fruit being like our barberry
in form and colour. It is green at first, turning red as it ripens. It
does not grow in bunches like our barberry, but here and there two or
three together about the stalk. They call it _bangue_. The _pene_, of
which their bread is made, grows on a small tender herb resembling
grass, the stalk being all full of small seeds, not inclosed in any
bask. I think it is the same which the Turks call _cuscus_, and the
Portuguese _yfunde_.

The _palmito_ tree is high and straight, its bark being knotty, and the
wood of a soft substance, having no boughs except at the top, and these
also seem rather reeds than boughs, being all pith within, inclosed by a
hard rind. The leaf is long and slender, like that of a sword lilly, or
flag. The boughs stand out from the top of the tree on all sides, rather
more than a yard long, beset on both sides with strong sharp prickles,
like saw-teeth, but longer. It bears a fruit like a small cocoa-nut, the
size of a chesnut, inclosed in a hard shell, streaked with threads on
the outside, and containing a kernel of a hard horny substance, quite
tasteless; yet they are eaten roasted. The tree is called _tobell_, and
the fruit _bell_. For procuring the palmito wine, they cut off one of
the branches within a span of the head, to which they fasten a gourd
shell by the mouth, which in twenty-four hours is filled by a clear
whitish sap, of a good and strong relish, with which the natives get
drunk. The oysters formerly mentioned grow on trees resembling willows
in form, but having broader leaves, which are thick like leather, and
bearing small knobs like those of the cypress. From these trees hang
down many branches into the water, each about the thickness of a
walking-stick, smooth, limber, and pithy within, which are overflowed by
every tide, and hang as thick as they can stick of oysters, being the
only fruit of this tree.

They have many kinds of ordinary fishes, and some which seemed to us
extraordinary; as mullets, rays, thornbacks, old-wives with prominent
brows, fishes like pikes, gar-fish, _cavallios_ like mackerel,
swordfishes, having snouts a yard long, toothed on each side like a saw,
sharks, dogfish, _sharkers_, resembling sha