398 DESCRIPTION OF BATAVIA CHAP, XVI1 
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. ete. 
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 twackmanise, or sweet palm-wine. 
The other two, one of which is called ¢uack oras, and the 
other twack 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 
