All these species of the Capsicum or Indian pepper (as it is called in America) are cultivated, or vegetate naturally in most parts of Jamaica. They grow generally in small tufted bushes, and seldom rise above three feet from the ground: the last sort however is more weakly than the rest, and when it meets with a support, shoots to a moderate height; and in shady places, is frequently observed to rise many feet from the root.
The capsulæ and seeds of these plants are full of a warm acrid oil, and generally prove an agreeable seasoning with those sorts of food that require a gentle stimulus to promote the proper digestion; and indeed such a stimulus becomes more generally requisite in those warm countries, where a more free and constant perspiration seldom fails to produce a weakness and languor in the bowels. They are used by most people in these colonies, and always observed to give an appetite, to help digestion, to promote the tonic motion of the viscera; and in more robust habits is sometimes observed to purge with a heat and tension about the podex.
There is a mixture made and used in some of our colonies, called Mandram, in which a deal of either the one or the other of these is employed, and which seldom fails to provoke an appetite in the most languid stomachs. The ingredients are, sliced cucumbers, eschalots or onions cut very small, a little lime-juice, and Madeira wine, with a few pods of bird or other pepper well mashed and mixed in the liquor.
The pods of this last sort dried, and pounded with a sufficient quantity of salt, is the Cayan pepper or butter of the West-Indians.
The Latin names under each of the four headings, and the short note on the goat pepper, are not transcribed; this is the account of all four kinds that follows them.