392 DESCRIPTION OF BATAVIA CHAP. XVII 
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 cowant, 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 batu or pisang bidjis. 
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) Grapes (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) Zamarinds (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) 
