A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, vol. 1

What it is

The first volume of a physician's natural history of Jamaica, from his stay on the island in 1687 to 1689. A long introduction describes food, drink, farming and illness on the island; the rest catalogs its plants.

Whose knowledge it records

Written by an English physician attached to the governor of Jamaica. He drew on colonists, on enslaved Africans and on earlier printed authors, and records what he was told far more often than who told him.

Passages transcribed

• The Introduction (French Sorrel) (vol. 1, p. lxii)