which they eat and call _papas_; which Clusius with much probability
guesses to be the same sort of plant that he received from the Governor
of Mons.

There is one obvious difficulty in this reasoning: we are not at all
sure that it was the potato of Virginia that Clusius obtained from the
Governor of Mons, it may have been the sweet potato. However, the
conclusion which Sir Joseph Banks draws from these details is, that
potatoes were brought from the mountainous parts of South America in the
neighbourhood of Quito, and that, as the Spaniards were the sole
possessors of that country, there can be little doubt of their having
been first carried into Spain. Further, that as it would take a
considerable time to introduce them into Italy, and make the Italians
acquainted with them to the extent of giving them a name, there is good
reason to believe, that they had been several years in Europe before
they had been sent to Clusius.

About 600,000 acres of land in Munster were declared forfeited to the
Crown on the fall of the Desmonds. This was parceled out to "Gentlemen
undertakers" on certain conditions; one being that they were bound,
within a limited time, to people their estates with "Well-affected
Englishmen." Raleigh became an undertaker, and by a legal instrument,
bearing the Queen's name, dated from Greenwich, last of February, 1586,
he had given to him 42,000 acres of this land, and by a further grant
the year after, the Monastery of Molanassa and the Priory of Black
Friars, near Youghal.[5]

Famine followed close upon the war with the Desmonds. "At length," says
Hooker, "the curse of God was so great, and the land so barren both of
man and beast, that whatsoever did travel from one end to the other of