564 NIEUHOFF*S BRAZIL. 



leaves of eight or nine inches long, and three inches broad, fliaped like a tongue, fmooth 

 and pale, green on one and covered with a white woolly fub fiance on the other fide. 

 The fruit of which is not unlike a pine-apple, about ten inches long, growing on the 

 top of the flem ; it is divided into feveral partitions, which, opening by degrees, a pale 

 grey flower appears betwixt each, containing underneath twenty or more grains of a 

 black fhining feed. The ftalk chewed draws the rheum from the head, and breaks the 

 ftone in the bladder. It is looked upon as an excellent remedy againft the involuntary 

 emiffion of the feed throughout Brazil, and cures it in eight days time. 



All over Brazil, but efpecially in the ifle of Itamarika, grows a certain tree called 

 Kasjui or Kasjou, bearing a fruit of the fame name. Its leaves are dark-green, broad 

 and round, interfperfed with many fmall veins. It bears two different bloffoms and 

 fruits. The white bloffom which appears in the lower branches produce a juicy 

 fpungy fruit like an apple, of a very cooling and aftringent quality ; but the red blof- 

 fom on the top a kind of chefnut. The Brazilians draw no fmall advantage from this 

 tree ; out of the apples they make a very good cyder called by them Kasjouwy, which 

 is fourifh, but if mixed with fugar, makes it as pleafant as Rhenifh wine, and has this 

 excellency, that though it foon feizes the head, yet it pa'ffes off without any harm. 

 The other fruit they eat like as we do our chefnuts. 



Among the products of the Weft and Eaft-Indies is a tree called Papay by the 

 Javanefe and Dutch, and Pinoguacu or Mamoeira by the Americans ; and fometimes 

 entitled with the name of the melon-tree by our people, by reafon of the refemblance 

 of its fruit to our melons. This tree is of two different kinds, to wit, the male and 

 female. It grows and perifhes again in a fhort time, its trunk being fo fpungy that 

 it may be cut as eafy as a cabbage-ftalk ; the leaves it bears are very large and broad, 

 not unlike our vine-leaves, growing on long ftalks round the top of the tree, and 

 covering the fruit, which hangs in a knot, and is green at the firft, but turns yellow at 

 laft, refembling in Ihape a pear, but of the bignefs of our fmall melons, unto which 

 its pulp refembles both in colour and tafte, when come to maturity, but whilft they are 

 green, they are boiled with meat, and give it a taxt tafte. 



The red-pepper, known by the name of Brazil -pepper, and called Chili Lada by 

 the Brazilians, grows on knotty ftalks of about five or fix foot high ; the rind being a 

 dark-green, diftinguifhed with white -rings, from whence fhoot forth fmall crooked 

 branches of a hand's -breadth in length, bearing a fmall white flower, which produces 

 a green hufk, and turns red by degrees as it ripens, with a certain feed within it, being 

 as hot and biting upon the tongue as the common brown-pepper, and fo does the huflc. 

 In the Eaft Indies they preferve it, and call it Aetzar, and ufe it raw in their fifh-fauces. 

 In Brazil, they cut two or three of thefe huflcs, whilft they are green, in flices, and 

 mix them with oil and vinegar, or fome lemon -juice, to acuate their appetite, but it is 

 too hot for thofe that are not ufed to it, which is allayed by a good quantity of fait. 

 This kind of pepper grows likewife in the Eaft-Indies, in the ifland of Java, in Bengal, 

 and feveral other places. I have feen it alfo in fome of our gardens in Holland. 

 There is another fhrub which grows frequently in the Eaft Indies, not unlike this in 

 Ihape and bignefs, which bears a yellow flower ; it is called Halika Kabus by the Ara- 

 bians or Alkekengi, and fufflciently known in thefe parts. The flower produces a fmall 

 bladder which contains the fruit and feed ; they are not fo big as ours. The Indians 

 and Chinefe mix it with a certain fruit called by them Poma d'Oro, Tamatas by the 

 Portuguefe, and Melanfana by the Italians j they alfo eat it with Chili Lada, or Brazi- 

 lian pepper. The Portuguefe cut the Poma d'Oro and the huflv of the Brazilian pepper 

 }n thin flices, which being mixed with oil and vinegar, they eat as fallad, and look 



upon 



