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• Thine age was spent solliciting the Prince,
• To whom thou gav’st the sceptre of that world. [120]
• Yet, blessed spirit, where inthron’d thou sit’st,
• Chief ‘mid the friends of man, repine not thou:
• Dear to the Nine,¹ thy glory shall remain
• While winged Commerce either ocean ploughs;
• While its lov’d pole the magnet coyly shuns; [125]

• While weeps the guaiac, and while joints the Cane.

• SHALL the Muse celebrate the dark deep mould,
• With clay or gravel mix’d?—This soil the Cane
• With partial fondness loves; and oft surveys
• Its progeny with wonder.—Such rich veins [130]
• Are plenteous scatter’d o’er the Sugar-isles:
• But chief that land, to which the bearded fig,²

VER. 132. the bearded Fig] This wonderful tree, by the Indians called the Banian-tree; and by the botanists Ficus Indica, or Bengaliensis, is exactly described by Q. Curtius,³ and beautifully by Milton in the following lines:⁴

“The Fig-tree, not that kind renown’d for fruit,
“But such as at this day to Indians known,
“In Malabar and Decan spreads her arms;⁵
“Branching so broad and long, that in the ground,
“The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow
“About the mother-tree, a pillar’d shade,
“High over-arch’d, and echoing walks between.
“There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat,
“Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds
“At Loop-holes cut through thickest shade.”——

What year the Spaniards first discovered Barbadoes is not certainly known; this however is certain, that they never settled there, but only made use of it as a stock-island⁶

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