[ Plantains, or Bananas. ]
Their plantain trees bear fruit but once, and then are cut down, and out of the root thereof spring three or four young trees.
[ Bees and the Baobab. ]
They have great store of honey, which hangeth in the Elicondy trees.203 They gather it with a hollow piece of wood, or chest, which they hang in the top of the tree, and once a year it is full, by smoke rewarding the laborious creatures with robbery, exile, death.
[Purchas here adds in the margin, “out of Battell’s own reports”:—
This Alicunde or Elicondi tree is very tall and exceeding great, some as big as twelve men can fathom, spreading like an oak. Some of them are hollow, and from the liberal skies receive such plenty of water, that they are hospitable entertainers of thousands in this thirsty region. Once have I known three or four thousand remain at one of these trees, and thence receiving all their watery provision for four and twenty hours, and yet not empty. The negroes climbed up with pegs of hardwood (which that softer easily receiveth, the smoothness not admitting other climbing), and I think that some one tree hold forty tuns of water.
This tree affords not less bountiful hospitality to the back than belly, yielding (as her belly to their bellies, so) her back to their backs; excepting that this is better from the younger trees, whose tenderer backs being more seasonable for discipline, are so soundly beaten (for man’s fault, whence came the first nakedness), whereby one fathom cut from the tree is extended into twenty, and is presently fit for wearing, though not so fine as the Iuzanda204 tree yields. This tree yields excellent cloth from the inner bark thereof by like beating.]