their Overseers to search, if any weeds have taken root, and destroy them, or if any of the Plants fail, and supply them; for where the Plants are wanting, weeds will grow; for, the ground is too vertuous to be idle. Or, if any Withs grow in those vacant places, they will spread very far, and do much harm, pulling down all the Canes they can reach to. If this husbandry be not used when the Canes are young, it will be too late to finde a remedy; for, when they are grown to a height, the blades will become rough and sharp in the sides, and so cut the skins of the Negres, as the blood will follow; for their bodies, leggs, and feet, being uncloathed and bare, cannot enter the Canes without smart and losse of blood, which they will not endure. Besides, if the Overseers stay too long, before they repair these void places, by new Plants, they will never be ripe together, which is a very great harm to the whole field, for which there is but one remedy, and that almost as ill as the disease, which is, by burning the whole field, by which they lose all the time they have grown: But the roots continuing secure from the fire, there arises a new spring altogether; so that to repair this losse of time, they have only this recompence, which is, by burning an army of the main enemies to their profit, Rats, which do infinite harm in the Iland, by gnawing the Canes, which presently after will rot, and become unservicable in the work of Sugar. And that they may do this justice the more severely, they begin to make their fire at the out-sides of that land of Canes they mean to burn, and so drive them to the middle, where at last the fire comes, and burnes them all; and this great execution they put often in practice, without Assises or Sessions; for, there are not so great enemies to the Canes, as these Vermine; as also to the Houses, where they lay up their stores of Corn and other provisions; and likewise in dwelling houses for their victualls. For, when the great down-falls of rain come, which is in _November_ and _December_, and in the time of the _Turnado_, they leave the field, and shelter themselves in the dwelling houses where they do much mischiefe.