Upon the shady banks of the Madelina there grows a climbing plant which the botanists call Aristolochia, the flowers of which are four feet in circumference, and children amuse themselves with covering their heads with them as hats.
The Banana which grows in all the hot parts of America, and furnishes the Indians with the chief part of their daily food, producing more nutritious substance, in less space, and with less trouble than any other known plant.
It is here that the ground produces the sugar-cane, the coffee, and the cocoa-nut from which is produced the chocolate. The vanilla, the anana or pine apple, and many other delicious fruits.
The cacao, though generally pronounced cocoa, must not be confounded with the Cocoa Palm which produces that largest of all nuts, the Cocoa-nut.
These trees and plants which I have mentioned, and many more equally beautiful, are all natives of the American woods.
But the European settlers, when they came, brought over to Europe many valuable kinds of fruit and plants, which they did not find here; and I never was more delighted than once on passing through Virginia, to observe the dwellings of the settlers shaded by orange, lemon, and pomegranate trees, that fill the air with the perfume of their flowers, while their branches are loaded with fruit.
Strawberries of native growth, of the richest flavour, spring up beneath your feet; and when these are passed away, every grove and field looks like a cherry orchard. Then follow the peaches, every hedge-row is planted with them. But it is the flowers and the flowering shrubs, that, beyond all else, render these regions so beautiful. No description can give an idea of the variety, the profusion, and the luxuriance of them.
The Dog-wood, whose lateral fan-like branches are dotted all over with star-like blossoms of splendid white, as large as those of the gumcistus.
The straight silvery column of the Papan fig, crowned with a canopy of large indented leaves; and the wild orange tree, mixed with the odoriferous and common laurel, form striking ornaments of this enchanting scene, with many other lovely flowers too numerous to describe.