ng down with its own weight. A large
tree of this sort does not bear usually above 20 or 30 apples, seldom
more. This fruit grows in most countries within the tropics, I have seen
of them (though I omitted the description of them before) all over the
West Indies, both continent and islands; as also in Brazil, and in the
East Indies.

The papaw too is found in all these countries, though I have not hitherto
described it. It is a fruit about the bigness of a musk-melon, hollow as
that is, and much resembling it in shape and colour, both outside and
inside: only in the middle, instead of flat kernels, which the melons
have, these have a handful of small blackish seeds about the bigness of
peppercorns; whose taste is also hot on the tongue somewhat like pepper.
The fruit itself is sweet, soft and luscious, when ripe; but while green
it is hard and unsavoury: though even then being boiled and eaten with
salt-pork or beef, it serves instead of turnips and is as much esteemed.
The papaw-tree is about 10 or 12 foot high. The body near the ground may
be a foot and a half or 2 foot diameter; and it grows up tapering to the
top. It has no branches at all, but only large leaves growing immediately
upon stalks from the body. The leaves are of a roundish form and jagged
about the edges, having their stalks or stumps longer or shorter as they
grow near to or further from the top. They begin to spring from out of
the body of the tree at about 6 or 7 foot height from the ground, the
trunk being bare below: but above that the leaves grow thicker and larger
still towards its top, where they are close and broad. The fruit grows
only among the leaves; and thickest among the thickest of them; insomuch
that towards the top of the tree the papaws spring forth from its body as
thick as they can stick one by another. But then lower down where the
leaves are thinner the fruit is larger, and of the size I have described:
and at the top where they are thick they are but small, and no bigger
than ordinary turnips; yet tasted like the rest.

Their chief land animals are their bullocks, which are said to be many;
though they ask us 20 dollars apiece for them; they have also horses,
asses, and mules, deer, goats, hogs, and black-faced long-tailed monkeys.
Of fowls they have cocks and hens, ducks, guinea-hens, both tame and
wild, parakeets, parrots, pigeons, turtledoves, herons, hawks,
crab-catchers, galdens (a larger sort of crab-catchers) curlews, etc