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But "Young Webb" was evidently spoiling that night for more adventures, for while still in his cups he went to the masquerade and, meeting a German who had a mask with a great nose, he asked him what he did with such an ornament, pulled it off and slapped his face. "He was carried out by six grenadiers," is the terse climax of the story. Florio was, of course, a frequenter of the Cocoa-Tree.
Pierre, in his sweet story of Virginia, makes the bloom of the cocoa-tree, or the growth of the banana, a yearly and a loved monitor of the passage of her life. How cold and cheerless in the comparison would be the icy chronology of the North; So many years have I seen the lakes locked, and the foliage die! The budding and blooming of spring seem to belong properly to the opening of the months.
"He fancies he can play at billiards," said he. "I won two hundred of him at the Cocoa-Tree. HE play, the young flat! He'd have played for anything that day, but his friend Captain Dobbin carried him off, hang him!" "Rawdon, Rawdon, don't be so wicked," Miss Crawley remarked, highly pleased. "Why, ma'am, of all the young fellows I've seen out of the line, I think this fellow's the greenest.
I followed my uncle closely, and we had no difficulty in shooting three of the great pigeons, which Ebo pounced upon and carried off in triumph, and in a few minutes they were roasting upon sticks, while our black cook busied himself in climbing a cocoa-tree, from which he detached half a dozen nuts, each of which came down with a tremendous thud.
The cocoa-tree, in the other parts of America, is in general cultivated around farm-houses, and the fruit is eaten; in the gulf of Cariaco, it forms extensive plantations. In a fertile and moist ground, the tree begins to bear fruit abundantly in the fourth year; but in dry soils it bears only at the expiration of ten years.
The most interesting objects for us, were the monkey's bread-tree, with its gourds weighing ten or twenty-five pounds, and containing a number of kernels, which are eaten, not only by monkeys, but also by men the clove, camphor, and cocoa-tree, the cinnamon and tea bush, etc.
Earlier and more sedate references to the Cocoa-Tree are in existence, There is, for example, a letter from General William Stewart, of October 27th, 1716, addressed to the father of William Pitt, placing this incident on record: "The other night, at the Cocoa-Tree, I saw Colonel Pitt and your brother-in-law Chomeley. The former made me a grave bow without speaking, which example I followed.
The duration of the tree does not in general exceed eighty or a hundred years; and its mean height at that age is from seventy to eighty feet. In the first thirty or forty years, a cocoa-tree of the gulf of Cariaco bears every lunation a cluster of ten or fourteen nuts, all of which, however, do not ripen.
At Javita a salt is fabricated by the incineration of the spadix and fruit of the palm-tree seje or chimu. This fine palm-tree, which abounds on the banks of the Auvana, near the cataract of Guarinumo, and between Javita and the Cano Pimichin, appears to be a new species of cocoa-tree.
It is observable, however, that although many species of the edible roots which grow in the West India Islands are found in Africa, yet I never saw, in any part of my journey, either the sugar-cane, the coffee, or the cocoa-tree, nor could I learn, on inquiry, that they were known to the natives.
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