The trees of which the woods on the northern side of the island are composed are most of them aromaticks, and of many different sorts. There are none of them of a size to yield any considerable timber, except the myrtle-trees, which are the largest on the island, and supplied us with all the timber we made use of, but even these would not work to a greater length than forty feet. The top of the myrtle-tree is circular, and appears as uniform and regular as if it had been clipped by art. It bears on its bark an excrescence like moss which in taste and smell resembles garlick, and {114} was used by our people instead of it. We found here too the piemento-tree, and likewise the cabbage-tree, though in no great plenty. And besides a great number of plants of various kinds, which we were not botanists enough either to describe or attend to, we found here almost all the vegetables which are usually esteemed to be particularly adapted to the cure of those scorbutick disorders which are contracted by salt diet and long voyages. For here we had great quantities of water-cresses and purslain, with excellent wild sorrel, and a vast profusion of turnips and Sicilian radishes: these two last, having some resemblance to each other, were confounded by our people under the general name of turnips. We usually preferred the tops of the turnips to the roots, which were often stringy, though some of them were free from that exception, and remarkably good. These vegetables, with the fish and flesh we got here, and which I shall more particularly describe hereafter, were not only extremely grateful to our palates, after the long course of salt diet which we had been confined to, but were likewise of the most salutary consequence to our sick, in recovering and invigorating them, and of no mean service to us who were well, in destroying the lurking seeds of the scurvy, from which perhaps none of us were totally exempt, and in refreshing and restoring us to our wonted strength and activity. To the vegetables I have already mentioned, of which we made perpetual use, I must add that we found many acres of ground covered with oats and clover. There were also some few cabbage-trees upon the island, as was observed before, but as they generally grew on the precipices, and in dangerous situations, and as it was necessary to cut down a large tree for every single cabbage, this was a dainty that we were able but rarely to indulge in.