390 DESCRIPTION OF BATAVIA CHAP. XVII 
dry. How far this kind of rice might be useful in our West 
Indian islands, where they grow no bread corn at all, I leave 
to the judgment of those who know their respective interests, 
as also the question whether the cassava, or manioc, their 
substitute for bread, is not as wholesome and cheaper than 
anything else which could be introduced among them. 
Besides rice they grow also Indian corn or maize, which 
they gather when young and toast in the ear. They have 
also a vast variety of kidney beans and lentils, called 
cadjang, which make a great part of the food of the common 
people. They have millet, yams, both wet and dry, sweet 
potatoes and some European potatoes, not to be despised, 
but dear. Their gardens produce cabbage, lettuce, cucumbers, 
radishes, China white radishes, which boil almost as well as 
turnips, carrots, parsley, celery, pigeon-pease (Cytissus cajan), 
kidney beans of two sorts (Dolichos chinensis and lignosus), egg 
plants (Solanum melongena), which eat delicately when boiled 
with pepper and salt, a kind of greens much like spinach (Con- 
vulvulus reptans), very small but good onions, and asparagus, 
scarce and very bad. They had also some strong-smelling 
European plants, as sage, hyssop and rue, which they thought 
smelt much stronger here than in their native soils, though 
I cannot say I was sensible of it. But the produce of the 
earth from which they derive the greatest advantage is 
sugar; of it they grow immense quantities, and with little 
care have vast crops of the finest, largest canes imaginable, 
which I am inclined to believe contain in an equal quantity 
a far larger proportion of sugar than our West Indian ones. 
White sugar is sold here for about 24d. a pound. The 
molasses makes their arrack, of which, as of rum, it is the 
chief ingredient; a small quantity of rice only, and some 
cocoanut wine, being added, which I suppose gives it its 
peculiar flavour. Indigo they also grow a little, but I 
believe no more than is necessary for their own use. 
The fruits of the East Indies are in general so much 
cried up by those who have eaten of them, and so much 
preferred to our European ones, that I shall give a full list 
of all the sorts which were in season during our stay, and 
