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• Butt the young negroes, while their swarthy sires, [535]
• With ardent gladness wield the bill; and hark,

• The crop is finish’d, how they rend the sky!—

• NOR, beauteous only shows the cultured soil,
• From this cool station. No less charms the eye
• That wild interminable waste of waves: [540]
• While on the horizon’s farthest verge are seen
• Islands of different shape, and different size;
• While sail-clad ships, with their sweet produce fraught,
• Swell on the straining sight; while near yon rock,
• On which ten thousand wings with ceaseless clang [545]
• Their airies build, a water spout descends,
• And shakes mid ocean; and while there below,
• That town, embowered in the different shade
• Of tamarinds, panspans, and papaws,¹ o’er which

VER. 549. panspans] See the notes on Book II.

VER. 549. papaws] This singular tree, whose fruits surround its summit immediately under the branches and leaves, like a necklace; grows quicker than almost any other in the West Indies. The wood is of no use, being spungy, hollow, and herbacious; however, the blossoms and fruit make excellent sweet-meats;² but above all, the juice of the fruit being rubbed upon a spit, will intenerate³ new killed fowls, &c. a circumstance of great consequence in a climate, where the warmth soon renders whatever meats are attempted to be made tender by keeping, unfit for culinary purposes. Nor, will it only intenerate fresh meat; but, being boiled with salted beef, will render it easily digestible. Its milky juice is sometimes used to cure ringworms.⁴ It

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