DEC. 1768 BRAZILIAN FRUITS 37 



with it taste as if they were made of sawdust. Yet it is 

 the only bread which is eaten here, for European bread is 

 sold at nearly the rate of a shilling a pound, and is exceed- 

 ingly bad on account of the flour, which is generally heated 

 in its passage from Europe. 



The country produces many more articles, but as I did not 

 see them or hear them mentioned, I shall not set them down, 

 though doubtless it is capable of producing anything that 

 our West Indian islands do ; notwithstanding this they have 

 neither coffee nor chocolate, but import both from Lisbon. 



Their fruits, however, I must not pass over in silence. 

 Those that were in season during our stay were pine-apples, 

 melons, water-melons, oranges, limes, lemons, sweet lemons, 

 citrons, plantains, bananas, mangos, mamme-apples, acajou- 

 apples and nuts, Jambosa, 1 another sort which bears a small 

 black fruit, cocoanuts, palm nuts of two kinds, palm berries. 

 Of these I must separately give my opinion, as no doubt it 

 will seem strange to some that I should assert that I have 

 eaten many of them, and especially pine-apples, better in 

 England than any I have met with here. I begin, then, 

 with the pines, as the fruit from which I expected the most, 

 they being, I believe, natives of this country, though I can- 

 not say I have seen or even heard of their being at this 

 time wild anywhere in this neighbourhood. They are 

 cultivated much as we do cabbages in Europe, or rather with 

 less care, the plants being set between beds of any kind of 

 garden stuff, and suffered to take their chance : the price of 

 them in the market is seldom above, and generally under a 

 vintain, which is three halfpence. 



All that Dr. Solander and myself tasted we agreed were 

 much inferior to those we had eaten in England, though in 

 general they were more juicy and sweet, yet they had no 

 flavour, but were like sugar melted in water. Their melons 

 are still worse, to judge from the single specimen we had, 

 which was perfectly mealy and insipid ; their water-melons, 

 however, are very good, for they have some little flavour or 

 at least a degree of acid, which ours have not. Oranges are 



1 Eugenia jambos, Linn. 



