THE PINE-APPLE. 253 



Pine brought from Barbadoes and presented to his Ma- 

 jesty ; but the first that were seen in England were those 

 sent to Cromwell four years since." In 1668 he says 

 again, " I was at a banquet which the King gave to the 

 French Ambassador. Standing by his Majesty at dinner, 

 in the presence, was that rare fruit called the King Pine, 

 growing in Barbadoes in the West Indies." His Majesty, 

 after cutting it up, was pleased, in Eastern fashion, to 

 give a piece off his own plate to this worthiest of his 

 courtiers, that he might taste as well as feast his eyes 

 upon a novelty he had never seen before ; but this further 

 acquaintance only induced disappointment ; for, " in my 

 opinion," he continues, "it falls far short of those ravish- 

 ing varieties of deliciousness described in Captain Ligon's 

 history and others ; but possibly it might be, or certainly 

 was, much impaired in coming so far." This was a dis- 

 tressing discovery for the biases gourmands of Charles's 

 court, in search of a new sensation, for the boldest of them 

 would hardly have dared to undertake a voyage to the 

 "West Indies for the sake of getting fresh pine-apples ; 

 and the need therefore became pressing that some other 

 means should be tried to secure the enjoyment of charms 

 so exquisite, yet so fleeting as to be thus dissipated by a 

 few weeks' voyage. A Dutchman, Le Cour of Leyden, 

 was the magician who, after many laborious and costly 

 efforts, succeeded in first devising a spell potent enough 

 to compel the royal foreigner to bloom beyond his native 

 tropics, and present himself to European admirers in all 

 the fulness of his attractions. 



A picture at Kensington Palace, in which Eose, the 

 royal gardener, is represented upon his knees presenting 

 a pine to Charles II., has led some to think that he was 

 himself the grower of the fruit ; but it is more probable 

 that he was only its purveyor, for one of the Sloanean 

 MSS. distinctly affirms that the Ananas was not intro- 

 duced into this country until 1690, in which year it was 

 procured from Holland, as a botanical plant for the Royal 

 Gardens at Kew. The memory of the first that bore 

 fruit in England is preserved in a landscape in the Fitz- 

 william Museum at Cambridge, in which one is intro- 



