Both Sea-Lions And Seals Were So Numerous On
The Shore, That We Had To Drive Them Away Before We Could Land, And They
Were So Numerous As Is Hardly Credible, Making A Most Prodigious Noise.
There are but few birds.
One sort, called pardelas by the Spaniards,
burrow in the ground like rabbits, and are said to be good eating. There
are also humming-birds, not much larger than bumble bees, their bills
no thicker than a pin, their legs proportional to their bodies, and
their minute feathers of most beautiful colours. These are seldom taken
or seen but in the evenings, when they fly about, and they flew
sometimes at night into our fire. There is here a sort of cabbage tree,
of the nature of a palm, producing small cabbages, but very sweet. The
tree is slender and straight, with circular knobs on the stem fourteen
inches above each other, and having no leaves except at the top. The
branches are about twelve feet long, and at about a foot and a half from
the body of the tree begin to shoot out leaves, which are four feet long
and an inch broad, and so regularly placed that the whole branch seems
one entire leaf. The cabbage, which grows out from the bottom of the
branches, is about a foot long and very white; and at the bottom of this
there grow clusters of berries, weighing five or six pounds, like
bunches of grapes, as red as cherries and larger than our black-heart
cherries, each having a large stone in the middle, and the pulp eats
like our haws. These cabbage trees abound about three miles into the
woods, the trunk being often eighty or ninety feet high, and is always
cut down to get the cabbages, which are good eating; but most of them
grow on the tops of the nearest mountains to the great bay.
We found here some Guinea pepper, and some silk cotton trees, besides
several others with the names of which I am not acquainted. Pimento is
the best timber, and the most plentiful at this side of the island, but
it is very apt to split till it is a little dried. We cut the longest
and cleanest to split for fire wood. In the nearest plain, we found
abundance of turnip greens, and water-cresses in the brooks, which
greatly refreshed our men, and quickly cured them of the scurvy. Mr
Selkirk said the turnips formed good roots in our summer months, which
are winter at this island; but this being autumn, they were all run up
to seed, so that we had no benefit of them excepting their green leaves
and shoots. The soil is a loose black earth, and the rocks are very
rotten, so that it is dangerous to climb the hills for cabbages without
great care. There are also many holes dug into the ground by a sort of
birds called puffins, which give way in walking, and endanger the
breaking or wrenching a limb.
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