The land by
the sea for about 5 or 600 yards is a dry sandy soil, bearing only shrubs
and bushes of divers sorts. Some of these had them at this time of the
year, yellow flowers or blossoms, some blue, and some white; most of them
of a very fragrant smell. Some had fruit like peascods; in each of which
there were just ten small peas; I opened many of them, and found no more
nor less. There are also here some of that sort of bean which I saw at
Rosemary Island: and another sort of small, red, hard pulse, growing in
cods also, with little black eyes like beans. I know not their names, but
have seen them used often in the East Indies for weighing gold; and they
make the same use of them at Guinea, as I have heard, where the women
also make bracelets with them to wear about their arms. These grow on
bushes; but here are also a fruit like beans growing on a creeping sort
of shrub-like vine. There was great plenty of all these sorts of
cod-fruit growing on the sandhills by the seaside, some of them green,
some ripe, and some fallen on the ground: but I could not perceive that
any of them had been gathered by the natives; and might not probably be
wholesome food.
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