Digital Grainger

An Online Edition of The Sugar-Cane (1764)

154

  • Of Typhon, or of hurricane, destroy.
  • Nor should, tho’ small, the anata1 not be sung:
  • Thy purple dye, the silk and cotton fleece [535]
  • Delighted drink; thy purple dye the tribes
  • Of Northern-Ind, a fierce and wily race,
  • Carouse, assembled; and with it they paint
  • Their manly make in many a horrid form,
  • To add new terrors to the face of war. [540]
  • The muse might teach to twine the verdant arch,
  • And the cool alcove’s lofty roof adorn,
  • With ponderous granadillas,2 and the fruit

VER. 534. anata,] Or Anotto, or Arnotta; thence corruptly called Indian Otter, by the English. The tree is about the size of an ordinary apple-tree. The French call it Rocou; and send the farina home as a paint, &c. for which purpose the tree is cultivated by them in their islands. The flower is pentapetalous, of a bluish and spoon-like appearance. The yellow filaments are tipped with purplish apices.3 The style proves the rudiment of the succeeding pod, which is of a conic shape, an inch and a half long. This is divided into many cells, which contain a great number of small seeds, covered with a red farina.

VER. 543. granadilla] This is the Spanish name, and is a species of the passiflora, or passion-flower, called by Linnaeus Musa. The seeds and pulp, through which the seeds are dispersed, are cooling, and grateful to the palate. This, as well as the water-lemon, bell-apple, or honeysuckle, as it is named,4 being parasitical plants, are easily formed into cooling arbors, than which nothing can be more grateful in warm climates. Both fruits are wholesome. The granadilla is commonly eat with sugar, on account of its tartness, and yet the pulp is viscid.5 Plumier calls it Granadilla, latefolia, fructu maliformi. It grows best in shady places. The unripe fruit makes an excellent pickle.

  1. Also anatta, anatto, or annatto. Refers to Bixa orellana, a low, shrubby tree native to the tropical Americas that was used from precolonial times by indigenous peoples to produce a reddish-orange dye. They used the dye to paint their faces and bodies for ornamental purposes, as well as to protect from insects and the sun. ↩︎

  2. The passion fruit (Passiflora ligularis). Its native range is Panama to Venezuela and Peru. ↩︎

  3. Apexes. ↩︎

  4. Different names for Passiflora laurifolia, a passion fruit relative whose native range is the Caribbean to northern and northeastern Brazil. ↩︎

  5. Sticky, adhesive. ↩︎