86 Borneo. 



it is. It produces no naiisea or other bad effect, and the more 

 you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stoj^. In fact, to eat 

 durions, is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East to ex- 

 perience. 



When the fruit is ripe it falls of itself, and the only way 

 to eat durions in perfection is to get them as they fall, and 

 the smell is then less overpowering. When unripe, it makes 

 a very good vegetable if cooked, and it is also eaten by the 

 Dyaks raw. In a good fruit season large quantities are pre- 

 served salted, in jars and bamboos, and kept the year round, 

 when it acquires a most disgusting odor to Europeans, but the 

 Dyaks appreciate it highly as a relish with their rice. There 

 are in the forest two varieties of wild durions with much 

 smaller friiits, one of them orange-colored inside ; and these 

 are probably the origin of the large and fine durions, which 

 are never found wild. It would not, perhaps, be correct to 

 say that the durion is the best of all fruits, because it can not 

 supply the place of the subacid juicy kinds, such as the orange, 

 grape, mango, and mangosteen, whose refreshing and cooling 

 qualities are so wholesome and grateful ; but as producing a 

 food of the most exquisite flavor it is unsurpassed. If I had 

 to fix on two only as representing thie perfection of the two 

 classes, I should certainly choose the durion and the orange 

 as the king and queen of fruits. 



The durion is, however, sometimes dangerous. When the 

 fruit begins to ripen it falls daily and almost hourly, and ac- 

 cidents not unfrequently happen to persons walking or work- 

 ing under the trees. When the durion strikes a man in its 

 fall, it produces a dreadful wound, the strong spines tearing 

 open the flesh, while the blow itself is very heavy ; but from 

 this very circumstance death rarely ensues, the copious effu- 

 sion of blood preventing the inflammation which might oth- 

 erwise take place. A Dyak chief informed me that he had 

 been struck down by a durion falling on his head, which he 

 thought would certainly have caused his death, yet he recov- 

 ered in a very short time. 



Poets and moralists, judging from our English trees and 

 fruits, have thought that small fruits always grew on lofty 

 trees, so that their fall should be harmless to man, while the 

 large ones trailed on the ground. Two of the largest and 



