Digital Grainger

An Online Edition of The Sugar-Cane (1764)

99

  • Nurse of each art; where science yet finds friends

  • Amid this waste of waters; wept thy rage?

  • THEN trust not, planter, to the unsteddy gale; [225]
  • But in Tobago’s1 endless forests fell
  • The tall tough hiccory, or calaba.2
  • Of this, be forc’d two pillars in the ground,
  • Four paces distant, and two cubits3 high:
  • Other two pillars raise; the wood the same, [230]
  • Of equal size and height. The Calaba
  • Than steel more durable, contemns the rain,
  • And sun’s intensest beam; the worm, that pest
  • Of mariners, which winds its fatal way
  • Through heart of British oak,4 reluctant leaves [235]
  • The closer calaba.—By transverse beams
  • Secure the whole; and in the pillar’d frame,
  • Sink, artist, the vast bridge-tree’s5 mortis’d form
  • Of ponderous hiccory; hiccory time defies:

VER. 227. Hiccory] This is a lofty spreading tree, of very hard wood, excellently adapted to the purposes of the mill-wright. The nut, whose shell is thick, hard, and roughish, contains an agreeable and wholesome kernel. It grows in great abundance in St. Croix,6 Crab island,7 and Tobago.

VER. 227. Calaba] This lofty tree is commonly called Mastic: it is a hard wood, and is found in the places where the Hiccory grows. The flowers are yellow, and are succeeded by a fruit, which bears a distant resemblance to a shrub.

  1. An island located northeast of Trinidad and southeast of Grenada. Now part of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. ↩︎

  2. Calophyllum antillanum is a hardwood tree whose native range includes Central America and the Caribbean. ↩︎

  3. An ancient measurement of length derived from the forearm, usually about 18-22 inches. ↩︎

  4. The naval shipworm (Teredo navalis) is a mollusc that burrows into underwater timbers on piers and ships. It was particularly destructive to the British or English oak (Quercus robur), which was long used in shipbuilding, including by the British navy. The English oak is native to Britain. ↩︎

  5. An adjustable beam that supports the spindle of the runner or upper stone in a grain mill. ↩︎

  6. An island that now forms part of the US Virgin Islands. ↩︎

  7. Isla de Vieques, a part of Puerto Rico that lies immediately east of the main island. ↩︎