EXPEDITION TO S U R 1 N A M. 



and are extremely full of the richefl acid iliat T know, 

 which has a particularly fine flavour, and is a great blef- 

 fmg to the fick foldiers and failors in this colony, who 

 have them for the trouble of gathering ; fo that it is not 

 uncommon to fee the tars employing their leifure time in 

 picking and carrying large hampers full to their vefTels. 

 In Surinam there are whole hedges of lime-trees, and all 

 round Paramaribo they grow wild. It is much to be la- 

 mented that, among other articles of luxury, this fruit 

 cannot be tranfported to Europe ; but whole calks of this 

 juice are frequently fent over, and they are alfo pickled and 

 preferved in large jars by the inhabitants. 



At the deflTert, among many other excellent fruits, I 

 obferved one which is here called the mammee apple : it 

 grows on a tree about the fize of an orange-tree, with a 

 grey-coloured bark; the wood is whitifli, and coarfe; the 

 leaf very thick, poliflied, and of a triangular form, without 

 fibres. This fruit is nearly round, and is about five or fix 

 inches in diameter, covered with a rufty coarfe fkin : the 

 pulp has the colour and confiftency of a carrot, enclofing 

 two large ftones with bitter kernels, but the fruit is of a de- 

 licious tafte, fweet mixed with acid, and a fmell fuperior in 

 fragrance to almoft any other fruit in the colony. There 

 -were alfo nuts of two fpecies, ufually called piftachios, 

 and by the negroes pinda ; one kind of them refembles 

 fmall chefnuts, and thefe grow in bunches on a tree. Tlie 

 others are produced by a flirub, and grow under ground ; 

 both have fweet oily kernels : of the laft there are two - 



Vol. IL L . in 



