[122] A species of cactus; the fruit is eaten in Sicily and elsewhere. We cannot join Sir Richard in its praise: perhaps as he had been long at sea, he found it grateful. The cochineal insect feeds on one species of this plant.
[123] This river is now called the Maccahe: probably it floods in the rainy season.
[124] By working up under their lee.
[125] These shoals, already alluded to at page 62, are now called the Abrolhos: there is a channel betwixt the islets and the main: the soundings extend to the eastward eighty or ninety miles.
[126] Boats hollowed from the trunk of a tree.
[127] Whoop! whoop! Cotgrave gives us the meaning of hootings and whoopings: noises wherewith swine are scared, or infamous old women disgraced.
[128] A sudden sensation, be it from fear or otherwise, has a surprising effect upon persons sick or bed-ridden. Lediard relates that in a sharp engagement with a combined squadron of French and Dutch ships, off St. Christopher, in 1667, Sir John Harman, the English commander, who had been lame and in great pain from the gout, upon discovering the enemy’s fleet, got up, walked about, and gave orders as well as ever, till the fight was over, and then became as lame as before.
[129] We do not approve of such means of exciting vigilance; some might have got their payments. According to Æsop, wolf may be called too often.
[130] Cape Frio has since become remarkable as the point on which her majesty’s ship Thetis was wrecked in December 1830, the night after she had left Rio Janeiro. A landing was effected, and nearly the whole crew saved. A snug cove north of the cape, with a boat entrance to the southward, was much used during the operations afterwards carried on to attempt to recover the treasure embarked in her.
[131] Pine apples, ananassa sativa.