her but herself. Now, for the birds that live upon

the outward verge of the Island, I have not much to say. Sometimes teals come to our ponds, three or four couple together, but never go away."

Our readers would suppose that the teals fix their residence in the ponds.-No such thing.-They "never go away," because," when we see them, we take a gun and shoot them."

Having passed through the animals, our planter comes to the trees. There is the physic-nut, that purges you better than Epsom Salts. There are, the poison-tree, that blinds you; the coloquintida, the tamarind, the fig and cherry trees, that are good for nothing; the orange, the lemon, the lime, the pomegranate, the grova, whose seed you cannot kill if you eat it; the cocoa, and the custard apple, the very name of which fills your mouth with water.

"When 'tis ripe, we gather it, and keep it one day, and then it is fit to be eaten. We cut a hole at the lesser end, (that it may stand the firmer in the dish,) so big, as that a spoon may go in with ease, and with the spoon eat it. Never was excellent custard more like itself, than this to it; only this addition, which makes it transcend all custards that art can make, though of natural ingredients; and that is, a fruity taste, which makes it strange and admirable. Many seeds there are in it, but so smooth, as you may put them out of your mouth with some pleasure."

Then there are, the date-tree; the mangrove, big enough for barracks for a troop of Life-Guards; and the calibash, for your crockery-ware. With respect to timber, there are, the cedar, for ships and lead-pencils; the mastick, the lignum-vitæ, the locust, and the palmetto, more beautiful than a Corinthian pillar, with the bottoms of the branches like Xantippe's favorite utensil," and three hundred feet high;" but, ichabod ! in these degenerate days, not more than one hundred and thirty!

There are also the red pepper, to burn, and the water-melon, to quench you; the plaintain and banana, the fruit of which, when cut, presents "the picture of Christ and the Cross, so lively expressed, as no limner can do it (with one colour,) more exactly." Upon which he says;

"Much may be said upon this subject by better wits and abler souls than mine: my contemplation being only this, that, since those men dwelling in that place, professing the names of Christians, and denying to preach to those poor ignorant harmless souls, the negroes, the doctrine of Christ Crucified, which might convert many of them to his worship, he himself has set up his own Cross, to reproach these men, who, rather than they will lose the hold they have of them as slaves, will deny them the benefit and blessing of being Christians. Otherwise, why is this figure set up for these to look on, that never heard of Christ; and God never made any thing useless, or in vain."

We trust that this will not encourage idleness amongst the Moravian or Methodistical brethren.-But, above all, there is the pine-apple, the ambrosial anana.

"In that single name, all that is excellent in a superlative degree, for beauty and taste, is totally and summarily included; and if it were here to speak for itself, it would save me much labour, and do itself much right. "Tis true, that it takes up double the time the plantine does, in bringing forth the fruit; for 'tis a full year before it be ripe : but when it comes to be eaten, nothing of rare taste can be thought on that is not there; nor is it imaginable, that so full a harmony of tastes can be raised out of so many parts, and all distinguishable. But before I come to say any thing of that, I will give you some little hints of her shape and manner of growth, which, though I must acknowledge myself to be down-right lame, in the expression, yet, rather than you shall lose all, I will endeavour to represent some of her beauties, in such faint expressions as I have. A slip taken from the body of this plant, and set in the ground, will not presently take root, but the crown that grows upon the fruit itself will sooner come to perfection than it, and will have much more beauty all the time of growing. In a quarter of a year, it will be a foot high, and then the leaves will be about seven or eight inches long, which appear to your eyes like semi-circles: the middle being a little hollow, so as I have seen a French sword that is made for lightness and strength. The colour, for the most part, frost upon green, intermixt with carnation, and, upon edges of the leaves, teeth like those upon saws; and these are pure incarnadine. The leaves fall over one another, as they are placed higher on the stem; the points of the lowest touching the ground; in a quarter of a year more, you shall perceive on the top of the stem a blossom, as large as the largest carnation, but of different colours, very small flakes, carnation, crimson and scarlet intermixt; some yellow, some blue leaves, and some peach-colour, intermixt with purple, sky-colour, and orange-tawny, gridaline, and gingeline, white and philyamort; so that the blossom may be said to represent many of the varieties to the sight, which the fruit does to the taste these colours will continue a week or ten days, and then wither and fall away; under which there will appear a little bunch, of the bigness of a walnut, which has in it all these colours mixt, which in the blossom were disperst; and so grows bigger for two months more, before it shews the perfect shape, which is somewhat of an oval form, but blunt at either end; and, at the upper end, grows out a crown of leaves, much like those below, for colour, but more beautiful; some of the leaves of this crown six inches long; the out leaves, shorter by degrees. This fruit is inclosed with a rind, which begins with a screw at the stalk; and so it goes round till it comes to the top or crown, gently rising; which screw is about of an inch broad: and the figures that are embroidered upon that screw near of that dimension, and divisions between. And it falls out so, as those divisions are never over one another in the screw, but are always under the middle of the figures above: those figures do vary so in the colouring, as if you see

an hundred pines they are not one like another, and every one of those figures has a little tuft or beard, some of green, some of yellow, some ash-colour, some carnation."

The sugar-cane was but little cultivated in Barbadoes at our adventurer's arrival; having been but lately introduced from Pernambuco, in Brazil. Perhaps the following particulars concerning it may not be uninteresting to such of our readers as do not sweeten their tea with honey, for the pious purpose of emancipating the slaves by the ruin of the planters. Its English name is said to be derived from the Spanish Açucar, a monkish corruption of Saccharum. It is supposed to have been known in the East, from time immemorial, and is mentioned in Holy Writ: Thou hast bought me sweet cane with money." Is. ch. 43, v. 24. "To what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country?" Jer. ch. 6, v. 20; and Lucan describes one of Pompey's auxiliaries as drinking the juice:

Quique bibunt tenerâ dulces ab arundine succos."

It is supposed to have been introduced by the Crusaders into the Morea, Rhodes, and Sicily, about the middle of the twelfth century, and was transplanted from the latter island to Spain, where it grew in great abundance in Valencia; and was afterwards carried to the Azores, Madeira, and the Cape de Verd Islands, by the Spaniards, in the fifteenth century. It is maintained by some, that it thence found its way, at a very early period, to Brazil and the Spanish West-India Islands; but other writers have satisfactorily shewn that it was spontaneously produced in Mexico, the banks of the Rio de la Plata, at the mouths of the Mississippi, and in the South-Sea Islands, so that the West Indians rather owe the art of making sugar to Europe, than the production of the cane itself.-The botanical name is Arundo Saccharifera. It is a jointed reed, terminating in leaves or blades, with the edges finely and sharply serrated. The body of the cane is strong, but brittle, and, when ripe, of a yellowish straw colour. It contains a soft, pithy substance, affording a copious supply of juice, of the most agreeable and least cloying sweetness in all nature; and, when converted into sugar, it is not only serviceable to the pastry-cooks, but turns your lungs into very durable confectionary, to the great profit of consumptive patients, according to Dr. Butler, a predecessor of Sydenham, who pithily and elegantly asks,

"If sugar can preserve both pears and plums,

Why can it not as well preserve our lungs?"!

The interval between the joints of the cane varies according to the nature of the soil: in general, it is from one to three

inches long, and the cane from half an inch to an inch in diameter. The height, in like manner, depends upon the soil. On strong soils, or lands richly manured, the canes will measure twelve feet to the upper joint; but the general height is from three feet and a half to seven, and on very rich lands the root will sometimes put forth a hundred shoots. It is not a plant of very nice or difficult cultivation; but it is liable to be destroyed by a species of blight, consisting of myriads of insects, invisible by the naked eye; by grubs, called borers; and, in some of the islands, by ants that burrow under the roots. When ripe, the canes are all cut and carried to the mill, where they are crushed between three vertical iron cylinders, in such a manner, that, having had a squeezing through the first and second rollers, they are further squeezed between the second and third, when they are fully exhausted of their juice. The juice is afterwards heated in three separate cauldrons, called clarifiers, in which, with the aid of lime, it throws off its scum. It is next boiled down in four large coppers, until it becomes thick, and is afterwards allowed to cool in large coolers, where it runs into a coarse mass of halfformed crystals, and separates itself from the molasses; it is then put into hogsheads, in which it is further drained of the molasses, through the spungy stalks of the plantine leaf, stuck through some holes in the bottom. In about three weeks, it is dry and clean, and the process is finished; the sugar thus made is called Muscovado. There appears but little essential alteration in the curing, since our author's time. Lump sugar was made from the Muscovado, placed in conical pots, with clay on the top, to exclude the air, whilst the molasses exuded through a hole in the bottom. The art is said to have been discovered from observing that a hen, that had walked over some Muscovado sugar with dirty feet, left it whiter in her track. Rum is a distillation from the scum rising during the boiling of the juice, and, in our author's time, was distinguished by the very appropriate name of kill-devil. The business of sugar making, or, as Ligon facetiously terms it," the sweet negotiation of sugar, was looked upon at this time as extravagantly profitable as Real del Monte mining, or Raleigh's enterprises to El Dorado. A certain Colonel Drax, one of the planters, had recently began with a capital of Three hundred pounds, and, according to our author, had soon money enough to buy an English estate of Ten thousand pounds a year! Alas, neither "the sweet negotiation," nor any other, now-a-days, keeps poverty from the West Indian's doors.

Ligon concludes his History with a kind of summing up of the pleasures of living at home and emigration. In England there were hunting, hawking, and racing; but, in Barbadoes, there were neither game to hunt, birds to hawk, nor ground nor

atmosphere for racing. The sight is better pleased with the sky and scenery of Barbadoes; but the violets and roses of England delight the scent most. As to feeling,

"It can be applied but two ways, either in doing or suffering; the poor negroes and Christian servants find it perfectly upon their heads and shoulders by the hands of their severe overseers; so that little pleasure is given the sense, by this coercive kind of feeling, more than a plaister for a sore pate; but this is but a passive kind of feeling: but take it in the highest and most active way it can be applied, which is upon the skins of women, and they are so sweaty and clammy, as the hand cannot pass over, without being glued and cemented in the passage or motion; and, by that means, little pleasure is given to, or received by, the agent or the patient: and, therefore, if this sense be neither pleased in doing nor suffering, we may decline it as useless in a country where down of swans, or wool of beaver, is wanting."

Taste, of course, prefers Barbadoes; as who, indeed, would deign to think of England, when turtle is to be fished, and custard-apple dallies from its branch with your lips. But our author candidly confesses that, in spite of the princely fortunes and the flesh-pots, the yellow fever, and the home-sickness or longing after England, are great draw-backs on happiness. The first vomits you to death in eighteen hours, and is, moreover, of that singularly happy character, that, after three hundred years of depopulation, it still remains to be decided whether it is contagious or curable, to the very signal honour of medicine, and the great convenience of "writing" physicians.Our author, after nearly dying of it, set sail for England, and was nearly lost, by the sails being split by a tornado, which took an opportunity to blow, when there was no twine to mend them; but a little virgin, who was a passenger, addressed herself to the carpenter, to make her a distaff and spindle, with which she spun the precious commodity; whereupon the sails were made whole, and Ligon reached shore to write his history, and put in the Upper (King's) Bench, to his great misfortune."But," he piously adds, "when the great leveller of the world, death, shall run his progress, all estates will be laid even."

"Mors sceptra Lignatius æquat.”

Master Ligon here takes leave of his reason, and we shall here take leave of him. His book is amusing, and, with the exception of a fib or two, by way of sauce piquante, is a very accurate account of Barbadoes.