There is the appearance of but little cultivation; the greater part of the land is wholly uncultivated, and very little care and labour seem to have been bestowed upon the rest; there are indeed little patches or gardens, in which many kinds of European garden stuff are produced, particularly cabbages, peas, beans, kidney-beans, turnips, and white radishes, but all much inferior to our own: water melons and pine apples are also produced in these spots, and they are the only fruits that we saw cultivated, though the country produces musk melons, oranges, limes, lemons, sweet lemons, citrons, plantains, bananas, mangos, mamane apples, acajou or cashou apples and nuts; jamboira of two kinds, one of which bears a small black fruit; cocoa nuts, mangos, palm nuts of two kinds, one long, the other round; and palm berries, all which were in season while we were there.

Of these fruits the water melons and oranges are the best in their kind; the pine apples are much inferior to those that I have eaten in England; they are indeed more juicy and sweet, but have no flavour; I believe them to be natives of this country, though we heard of none that at this time grow wild; they have, however, very little care bestowed upon them, the plants being set between beds of any kind of garden-stuff, and suffered to take the chance of the season. The melons are still worse, at least those that we tasted, which were mealy and insipid; but the water melons are excellent; they have a flavour, at least a degree of acidity, which ours have not. We saw also several species of the prickle pear, and some European fruits, particularly the apple and peach, both which were very mealy and insipid. In these gardens also grow yams, and mandihoca, which in the West Indies is called Cassada or Cassava, and to the flour of which the people here, as I have before observed, give the name of Farinha de Pao, which may not improperly be translated, Powder of post. The soil, though it produces tobacco and sugar, will not produce bread-corn; so that the people here have no wheat-flour, but what is brought from Portugal, and sold at the rate of a shilling a pound, though it is generally spoiled by being heated in its passage. Mr. Banks is of opinion, that all the products of our West Indian islands would grow here; notwithstanding which, the inhabitants import their coffee and chocolate from Lisbon.

Voyaging Accounts