398 DESCRIPTION OF BATAVIA CHAP, xvn 



markets is to a European very entertaining. The immense 

 quantities of fruit exposed is almost beyond belief : forty or 

 fifty cart-loads 'of pine-apples, packed as carelessly as we do 

 turnips in England, is nothing extraordinary ; and everything 

 else is in the same profusion. The time of holding these 

 markets, however, is so ill-contrived, that, as all the fruit for 

 the ensuing week, both for retailers and housekeepers, must 

 be bought on Saturday and Monday, there is afterwards no 

 good fruit in the hands of any but the Chinese in Passar 

 Pisang. 



Thus much for meat : in the article of drink, nature has 

 not been quite so bounteous to the inhabitants of this island 

 as she has to some of us, sons of the less abundant North. 

 They are not, however, to-day devoid of strong liquors, though 

 their religion, Mahometanism, forbids them the use of such ; 

 by this means driving them from liquid to solid intoxicants, 

 as opium, tobacco, etc. etc. 



Besides their arrack, which is too well known in Europe 

 to need any description, they have palm wine, made from a 

 species of palm. This liquor is extracted from the branches 

 which should have borne flowers, but are cut by people who 

 make it their business. Joints of bamboo cane are hung 

 under them, into which liquor intended by nature for the 

 nourishment of both flowers and fruit, distils in tolerable 

 abundance ; and so true is nature to her paths, that so long 

 as the fruit of that branch would have remained unripe, so 

 long, but no longer, does she supply the liquor or sap. This 

 liquor is sold in three states, the first almost as it comes 

 from the tree, only slightly prepared by some method 

 unknown to me, which causes it to keep thirty -six or 

 forty-eight hours instead of only twelve : in this state it is 

 sweet and pleasant, tasting a little of smoke, which, though 

 at first disagreeable, becomes agreeable by use and not at all 

 intoxicating. It is called tuackmanise, or sweet palm- wine. 

 The other two, one of which is called tuack oras, and the 

 other tuack cuning, are prepared by placing certain roots in 

 them, and then fermenting ; so that their taste is altered from 

 a sweet to a rather astringent and disagreeable taste, and 



