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Updated: May 16, 2025
Fig, lemon, and orange trees grow every where, and plantations of the cotton-shrub are as common as potato-fields in my own country. The stems of these shrubs are not higher than potato- plants, and are here cultivated exactly in the same way. I was told that they had been stunted this year by the excessive drought, but that in general they grew a foot higher.
They bear silk-cotton, which falls to the ground in November and December, but is not so substantial as that of the cotton-shrub, being rather like the down of thistles. Hence they do not think it worth being gathered in America; but in the East Indies it is used for stuffing pillows. The old leaves of this tree fall off in April, and are succeeded by fresh leaves in the course of a week.
Here is also a little of the right West India cotton-shrub: but none of the cotton is exported, nor do they make much cloth of it. Mangoes are yet but rare here: I saw none of them but in the Jesuits' garden, which has a great many fine fruits, and some cinnamon-trees.
Others I have bound fast with strings, so that the cod could not open; and in a few days after, as soon as I slackened the string never so little, the cod would burst and the cotton fly out forcibly at a very little hole, just as the pulp out of a roasting apple, till all has been out of the cod. The right cotton-shrub grows here also, but not on the sandbank.
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