their brow, when their chief sustenance, bread-fruit, is procured with no more trouble than that of climbing a tree and pulling it down. Not that the trees grew here spontaneously, but, if a man in the course of his life planted ten such trees (which, if well done, might take the labour of an hour or thereabouts), he would as completely fulfil his duty to his own as well as future generations, as we, natives of less temperate climates, can do by toiling in the cold of winter to sow, and in the heat of summer to reap, the annual produce of our soil; which, when once gathered into the barn, must again be re-sowed and re-reaped as often as the colds of winter or the heats of summer return to make such labour disagreeable.
O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint
may most truly be applied to these people; benevolent nature has not only provided them with necessaries, but with an abundance of superfluities. The sea, in the neighbourhood of which they always live, supplies them with vast variety of fish, better than is generally met with between the tropics, but these they get not without some trouble. Every one desires to have them, and there is not enough for all, though while we remained in these seas we saw more species perhaps than our island can boast of. I speak now only of what is more properly called fish, but almost everything which comes out of the sea is eaten and esteemed by these people. Shell-fish, lobsters, crabs, even sea insects, and what the seamen call blubbers of many kinds, conduce to their support; some of the latter, indeed, which are of a tough nature, are prepared by suffering them to stink. Custom will make almost any meat palatable, and the women, especially, are fond of this, though after they had eaten it, I confess I was not extremely fond of their company.
Besides the bread-fruit the earth almost spontaneously produces cocoanuts; bananas of thirteen sorts, the best I have ever eaten; plantains, but indifferent; a fruit not unlike an apple, which, when ripe, is very pleasant; sweet potatoes;
