s,
called _chien-dent_, intermixed with ferns, wild tobacco, and other
noxious weeds. In the low districts the grass is of a better kind, and
supplies the cattle with tolerable food during three or four months that
it is young and tender, and for most of the year in marshy places; at
other times they are partly fed with maize straw, the refuse of the sugar
mills, and the leaves and tender branches of some trees.

A few short-legged hares and some scattered partridges are found near the
skirts of the plantations, and further in the woods there are some deer
and wild hogs. Monkeys are more numerous, and when the maize is ripe they
venture into the plantations to steal; which obliges the inhabitants to
set a watch over the fields in the day, as the maroons and other thieves
do at night. There are some wood pigeons and two species of doves, and
the marshy places are frequented by a few water hens; but neither wild
geese nor ducks are known in the island. Game of all kinds was at this
time so little abundant in the woods of Vacouas, that even a creole, who
is an intrepid hunter and a good shot, and can live where an European
would starve, could not subsist himself and his dogs upon the produce of
the chase. Before the revolution this was said to have been possible; but
in that time of disorder the citizen mulattoes preferred hunting to work,
and the woods were nearly depopulated of hares and deer.

Of indigenous fruits there are none worth notice, for that produced by
the ebony scarcely deserves the name; a large, but almost tasteless
raspberry is however now found every where by the road side, and citrons
of two kinds grow in the woods. A small species of cabbage tree, called
here _palmiste_, is not rare and is much esteemed; the undeveloped leaves
at the head of the tree, when eaten raw, resemble in taste a walnut, and
a cauliflower when boiled; dressed as a salad they are superior to
perhaps any other, and make an excellent pickle. Upon the deserted
plantations, peaches, guavas, pine apples, bananas, mulberries and
strawberries are often left growing; these are considered to be the
property of the first comer, and usually fall to the lot of the maroons,
or to the slaves in the neighbourhood who watch their ripening; the wild
bees also furnish them with an occasional regale of honey.

With respect to noxious insects, the scourge of most tropical countries,
the wet and cold weather which renders Vacouas a disagreeable resi