16

• Change, like Medusa’s head, whate’er they touch,

• To stony hardness; boast this fertile glebe.

• THO’ such the soils the Antillean Cane
• Supremely loves; yet other soils abound,
• Which art may tutor to obtain its smile. [140]
• Say, shall the experienc’d Muse that art recite?
• How sand will fertilize stiff barren clay?
• How clay unites the light, the porous mould,
• Sport of each breeze? And how the torpid nymph
• Of the rank pool, so noisome to the smell, [145]
• May be solicited, by wily ways,
• To draw her humid train, and, prattling, run
• Down the reviving slopes? Or shall she say
• What glebes¹ ungrateful to each other art,
• Their genial treasures ope to fire alone? [150]
• Record the different composts; which the cold
• To plastic gladness warm? The torrid, which
• By soothing coolness win? The sharp saline,
• Which best subdue? Which mollify the sour?

shape, it cannot contain much less land than either Nevis or St. Christopher. It is naturally strong, so that when the French made descents thereon, in K. William and Q. Anne’s time,² they were always repulsed with considerable loss. It was settled by that great adventurer Sir Thomas Warner,³ A.D. 1632, who sent thither some of his people from St. Christopher, for that purpose. In the beginning of the reign of Charles II. the French took it, but it was restored, A.D. 1667, by the treaty of Breda. In this island, the Roman-catholics, who behaved well when our enemies attempted to conquer it, have many privileges, and of course are more numerous there, than in any other of the English Caribbee-islands. Its capital is called Plymouth. Columbus discovered it in his second voyage.

---