wild in the Woods are as good, onely they are more scarce and grow deeper, and so more difficult to be plucked up. It would be to no pur∣pose to mention their particular names; I shall onely speak a little in general of them. They serve both for Food, and for Carrees, that is, sauce, or for a relish to their Rice. But they make many a meal of them alone to lengthen out their Rice, or for want of it: and of these there is no want to those that will take pains but to set them, and cheap enough to those that will buy.
There are two sorts of these Alloes; some require Trees or Sticks to run up on; others require neither. Of the former sort, some will run up to the tops of very large Trees, and spread out very full of branches, and bear great bunches of blossoms, but no use made of them; The Leaves dy every year, but the Roots grow still, which some of them will do to a prodigious bigness within a Year or two's time, becoming as big as a mans wast. The fashion of them somewhat roundish, rug∣ged and uneven, and in divers odd shapes, like a log of cleft wood: they have a very good, savoury mellow tast.
Of those that do not run up on Trees, there are likewise sundry sorts; they bear a long stalk and a broad leaf; the fashion of these Roots are somewhat roundish, some grow out like a mans fingers, which they call Angul-alloes, as much as to say Finger-Roots; some are of a white colour, some of a red.
Those that grow in the Woods run deeper into the Earth, they run up Trees also. Some bear blossoms somewhat like Hopps, and they may be as big as a mans Arm.
For Herbs to boyl and eat with Butter they have excellent good ones, and several sorts: some of them are six months growing to ma∣turity, the stalk as high as a man can reach, and being boyled almost as good as Asparagus. There are of this sort, some having leaves and stalks as red as blood, some green: some the leaves green, and the stalk very white.
They have several other sorts of Fruits which they dress and eat with their Rice, and tast very savoury, called Carowela, Wattacul, Mo∣rongo, Cacorehouns, &c. the which I cannot compare to any things that grow here in England.
They have of our English Herbs and Plants, Colworts, Carrots, Ra∣dishes, Fennel, Balsam, Spearmint, Mustard. These, excepting the two last, are not the natural product of the Land, but they are transplant∣ed hither; By which I perceive all other European Plants would grow there: They have also Fern, Indian Corn. Several sorts of Beans as good as these in England: right Cucumbers, Calabasses, and several sorts of Pumkins, &c. The Dutch on that Island in their Gardens have Lettice, Rosemary, Sage, and all other Herbs and Sallettings that we have in these Countreys.
Nor are they worse supplyed with Medicinal Herbs. The Woods are their Apothecaries Shops, where with Herbs, Leaves, and the Rinds of Trees they make all their Physic and Plaisters, with which some∣times they will do notable Cures. I will not here enter into a larger discourse of the Medicinal Vertues of their Plants, &c. of which there are hundreds: onely as a Specimen thereof, and likewise of their Skill to use them; I will relate a Passage or two. A Neighbour of mine a Chingulay, would undertake to cure a broken Leg or Arm by