Six months in the West-Indies, in 1825

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the richness of guana, or illustrate eel by snake, and it is ten to one that you spoil his dinner for that day; yet verily these things are in rerum edibilium natura, and with their wholesome cleanliness might well put to shame the cannibal consumers of tripe and sheep's trotters. The English prejudice for beefsteaks may undoubtedly be defended upon certain grounds of political economy; but why, dear brother of mine, should you therefore think scorn of the froggeries of France, the crabberies of Antigua, or the monkeyries of Trinidad ? Within certain bounds (from which however I exclude the crapauderies of Dominica *, for 1 consider it decidedly unchristian to eat of them) my maxim is, gustus neque disputandi neque contemnendi sunt. I was particularly struck with a part of the road near Sandy Point, where there was a complete grove of the beautiful and singular seaside grape t for the space of half a mile on both sides of the road. Clusters of the fruit, which is something between a gooseberry and a golden pippin, were banging from every branch amongst the large round leaves; they were then yellow, but ripen into a darker colour. In * I have some doubts also of the admissibility of the Groogroo worms, which is a pasty of boiled maggots picked from the top, I believe, of a short prickly species of palm of that name in Trinidad. Cur. adv. Vult. †I believe the coccoloba uvifera.


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