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the pressure, and in a little time it dies. An effort has been recently made to revive it: the duty has been reduced that ought to have been abolished, and the consumption has greatly increased. In 1831, in round numbers, the importation of cocoa in Great Britain was three million and a half of pounds weight; the quantity of that from the colonies about one half the whole amount.

Mr. Pitt seems to have laboured under the impression of Girolamo Belzoni, that chocolate was a beverage "puitosto da porci, che da uomine," for he took effectual means that the drink that is fitter for pigs than men should be kept out of the reach of his poor countrymen. Lord Castlereigh must have considered Father Acosta was in the right of regarding cocoa as "a Mexican superstition," (una supersticion,) which a British people could not be made to pay too dear for.

The cocoa is much subject to injury from insects, but it may be considered a hardy plant in comparison with indigo. One labourer is sufficient for a thousand trees. Humboldt, from 1812 to 1814, estimates the sugar produce of Cuba at 200,000 casks, value eight millions of piastres, and the number of slaves employed in field-cultivation alone 143,000; while the Caraccas produce cocoa to the value of five millions of piastres, and have only 60,000 slaves, both in the towns and in the fields.

I had intended to have given you some account of the medical plants of this island, especially of those whose medical properties are known to the negroes; but I find it would be impossible to enumerate them even in any reasonable limits. I am, however, so thoroughly persuaded that a variety of very valuable plants is known to the negroes, whose medical uses we are unacquainted with, that I think any person who would undertake an account of the popular medicine of the negroes, would bring to light much information serviceable to medical science.

In many parts of the mountain-roads of Port Royal,

the hedges abound with roses. The lemon-grass is also found in abundance, and many other fragrant plants, which literally perfume the air, as one passes along the narrow mountain-paths.

Most of the vegetables used in Europe are raised in the mountains, and to these are added the native ones; which are hardly inferior to the former; such as callalu, ochro, chuchu, and that most excellent substitute for potatoes the Indian and white yam. The bread-fruit was brought to Jamaica by Captain Bligh, from Otaheite; the shaddock, from the East Indies; the limeorange, the pomegranate, and lemon, from Spain; the cinnamon and mango, from L'Isle de Bourbon; the logwood-tree, from the Spanish Main. The cedar abounds near St. Catherine's Peak, but it is not the same species as that of Lebanon. The cedar of Syria is much larger than any I have seen in Jamaica. The cabbage-tree was introduced into the island by Admirál Knowles the acca-tree from Africa, the bichy-tree from the coast of Guinea. It is impossible to form any idea of the size and beauty of the foliage of the trees of this island from any description of them. The ceiba, or wild cotton-tree, is the monarch of the forest of Jamaica. Some from root to branches present the appearance of one straight stupendous shaft, of seventy or eighty feet. One of these immense trees, on the Spanish Town road, extends its huge branches completely over one of the broadest roads in the islands.

The mountain-cabbage, one of the most beautiful of the palms, varies in height from 100 to 130 feet. Edwards is inclined to believe he saw one 150 feet; and Brown mentions that Mr. Ray speaks of one that grew to the height of 270 feet, or thereabouts. Mr. Hughes, in his Barbadoes History, says the highest palmeto royal, or mountain-cabbage, he saw, was 134 feet. In height and elegance of form, there is no tree like it. The trunks of the mahogany and cedar rise to eighty or ninety feet. But, for picturesque beauty, the clumps of the bamboo, which line some of the mountain-roads;

especially one in the vicinity of the Ramble, the property of Mr. Cockburn, exceed, in the depth of shade and gracefulness of umbrage, all other descriptions of natural arbours. The pimento-tree literally renders the atmosphere redolent of fragrance, which is more than I can say of many of these trees in such favour with our poets. The pimento, moreover, furnishes a poetical image to the observer who looks for minor shrubs about it; the pimento "suffers no rival plant to flourish within its shade." The cocoa-tree is, perhaps, the most generally useful to man of all others. It affords him a palatable fruit, a refreshing beverage, a wholesome vegetable, materials for constructing, fibres for cordage, foliage for thatching houses, a spirituous liquor, and a limpid oil.

The cocoa-tree begins to bear fruit, in a rich soil, at four years; in poor, arid land, not before ten years. The tree lives from eighty to one hundred years, and bears till about thirty-five. On an average, a tree produces annually from eighty to one hundred nuts, which are capable of yielding about twenty pounds of oil. There is a fruit-tree very common in Jamaica, the papaw, the fruit of which is much esteemed by the negroes: the milky juice which exudes from it is thought to possess the property of rendering the toughest meat tender, by applying it over the surface. There is a papaw in the garden of Madame Sanette, from an incision in which,

think, a tea-spoonful of the milky juice would flow in ten minutes. Humboldt says, "in comparing the milky juices of the papaw, the cow-tree, and the hevea, (from which the Indian rubber is procured,) there appears to be a striking analogy between the juices which abound in caseous matter, and those in which caoutchouc prevails. (Elsewhere, he states that the ultimate principle of cheese is caoutchouc: no wonder that cheese should be indigestible, if we cannot eat Stilton without swallowing Indian rubber.) All the white and newly prepared caoutchouc, as well as the impermeable cloaks manufactured in South America,

by placing a layer of milk of hevea between two pieces of cloth, exhale an animal and nauseating odour, which seems to indicate that the caoutchouc, in coagulating, carries with it the caseum, which is, perhaps, only an altered albumen." What a valuable introduction into Jamaica would be that of the palo de vaca! The milk of the cow-tree is an exception to that of most other plants, which is generally acrid and poisonous; but this, so far from being bitter or acrimonious, is of an agreeable flavour; and those who make use of it are said to grow sensibly fatter during the season the tree yields most milk.

The mountains of Jamaica are decked to their highest summits with the brightest verdure. It is not only the giants of the forests that are to be found there: the graceful rivals of the inmates of our conservatories are to be seen in all the native bloom of the wild beauty that delights in liberty: the citron and the orange, the star-apple, and the tamarind, flourish in the lower mountain range; and wherever the huts of the negroes are congregated in the valleys, or spread over the face of a sloping hill, the patches of ground here and there laid out in gardens, are sure to present the same broad foliage of plantains and bananas, the same bright verdure of waving Guinea-grass and stately corn.

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Will the day ever come, when the natural advantages of this noble island will be estimated by their neral development, and not surmised from the limited success of a partial cultivation? Will the day ever come when these advantages shall obtain the entire attention that is now taken up with futile animositywhen party politics shall be abandoned for patriotic views, and Jamaica shall become, what nature intended her to be, a peaceful country, on the face of whose fertility it will be evident to the world, "the labourer is worthy of his hire?”

I am, my dear Sir,

Yours, very truly,

1

R. R. M.

LETTER XXVI.

TO DR. WEBSTER.

MY DEAR SIR,

POISON S.

66

Kingston, August 30, 1834.

If South America abounds in venomous reptiles, the West Indies have no dearth of poisonous plants; and in former times it is very certain their nature was better known to the negroes than even their names now are to the white inhabitants, I have inquired a good deal respecting poisons of the negro doctors, and found it difficult enough to overcome their disinclination to enter on this subject. But if their accounts are to be trusted, there are vegetable poisons known to exist. here hardly less powerful than any known to us in Europe. Prussic acid, the poison that acts on life with the greatest energy and expedition, a single drop of which introduced into the circulation of an animal, killing it, says Magendie, comme s'il eut été frappé d'un boulet ou de la foudre,"—is hardly less powerful than woorara, an Indian plant used by the natives of Guyana for poisoning their arrows: applied to a wound, it produces immediate death, but taken internally, is less speedy in its operation. There are various others known to the natives of these islands, as well as of South America, capable of producing immediate death. The action of most of these is on the nervous system. The most powerful poisons appear to act directly on it. The juice of the upas-tree, used by the Indians for poisoning their arrows, when applied to a wound, kills in five minutes; yet when three times the quantity of the poison is applied to a portion of the sciatic nerve, laid bare for the purpose, it produces no effect. The

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