392 DESCRIPTION OF BATAVIA CHAP, xvn 



which were by any means so good as those of Brazil. 

 Europeans commonly compare this fruit to a melting peach, 

 to which in softness and sweetness it certainly approaches, 

 but in flavour as certainly falls much short of any that can 

 be called good. The climate, as I have been told, is here too 

 hot and damp for them ; and on the coast of India they are 

 much better. Here are almost as many sorts of them as of 

 apples in England ; some much inferior to others ; some of 

 the worst sorts are so bad that the natives themselves can 

 hardly eat them when ripe, but use them as an acid when 

 just full grown. One sort, called by them mangha cowani, has 

 so strong a smell that a European can scarce bear one in the 

 room ; these, however, the natives are fond of. The best 

 kinds for eating are first mangha, doodool, incomparably 

 better than any other, then mangha santock and mangha 

 gure ; and besides these three I know no other which a 

 European would be at all pleased with. 



(7) Of bananas (Musa) here are likewise innumerable 

 kinds : three only of which are good to eat as fruit, viz. pisang 

 mas, pisang radja, and pisang ambou ; all of which have a toler- 

 ably vinous taste ; the rest, however, are useful in their way. 

 Some are fried with butter, others boiled in place of bread 

 (which is here a dearer article than meat), etc. One of the 

 sorts, however, deserves to be taken notice of by botanists, 

 as it is, contrary to the nature of the rest of its tribe, full 

 of seeds, from whence it is called pisang latu or pisang lidjis. 

 It has, however, no excellence to recommend it to the taste 

 or any other way, unless it be, as the Malays think, good 

 for the flux. 



(8) Gh-apes (Vitis vinifera) are here to be had, but in no 

 great perfection : they are, however, sufficiently dear, a bunch 

 about the size of a fist costing about a shilling or eighteen- 

 pence. (9) Tamarinds (Tamarindus indica) are prodigiously 

 common and as cheap ; the people, however, either do not 

 know how to put them up, as the West Indians do, or do 

 not practise it, but cure them with salt, by which means they 

 become a black mass so disagreeable to the sight and taste 

 that few Europeans choose to meddle with them. (10) 





