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It is very rocky; yet above the rocks there is good yellow and black mould; not deep yet producing plenty of good tall trees, and bearing any fruits or roots which the inhabitants plant. I do not know all its produce; but what we saw were plantains, coconuts, pineapples, oranges, papaws, potatoes, and other large roots.
Occasionally we went over to the street and bought oranges or plantains bananas rarely sweets, as the sticks of candy, striped like a barber's pole in a glass jar on the end of the store counter were not very tempting. Often we chipped in our pennies, boys and girls together, and commissioned Gerrish to purchase some book we wanted or perhaps some bit of finery for festal decoration.
Another beautiful garden was next visited, belonging to the Marquis de la Candia, who received us and showed us his coffee and plantains in full growth, as well as a magnificent Spanish chestnut-tree, coëval with the dragon-tree. Out of one of its almost decayed branches a so-called young tree was growing, but it would have been thought very respectable and middle-aged in any other locality.
The height of the cultivated ground is from two hundred and seventy to three hundred toises above the level of the ocean, and yet we there find fields of corn mingled with plantations of sugar-cane, coffee, and plantains. The fine fields of wheat in Mexico are between six hundred and twelve hundred toises of absolute elevation; and it is rare to see them descend to four hundred toises.
Friendly Indians come, and Harry with them, bringing maize, peccari pork, and armadillos, plantains and pine-apples, and all eat and gather strength; and Raleigh writes home to his wife, 'to say that I may yet be King of the Indians here were a vanity. But my name hath lived among them' as well it might.
Why he had not returned sooner, we could not exactly make out, but we understood that the king of the village, Quagomolo, was very ill, and as the only large canoes belonged to him, Aboh could not see him to obtain the one he wished for. Our friends had brought a supply of plantains and several other things manioc, sugar-cane, and squashes.
At about half-past five in the evening the hilly character of the country gave place to that of a wide-stretching level plain, thickly overgrown with long rank grass, with occasional isolated clumps of bush, and here and there a tall feathery palm, or a grove of wild plantains or bamboo.
As we rode through the town of San Jorge, the place seemed almost deserted, and I remember lingering with others to haversack some bunches of yellow plantains which hung in an empty house on the plaza.
Every kind of fruit known in the finest climates is here produced in perfection. Grapes and figs are in profuse abundance; melons and peaches are no less plentiful, and bananas and plantains seem to rejoice in the climate as their own. The town has a never-failing supply of fresh water from a chain of swamps at the back, and the wells fed by them are never dry.
We remark that while some of these giants are clad in their old leaves others are bright green with new foliage, while others are bare and broomy as English woods in midwinter. They are backed by a truly portentous vegetation of red and white mangroves, palms, plantains, and baobabs, rank guinea-grass filling up every gap with stalks and blades ten feet tall.
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