FRUITS OF JAVA. 
277 
any thing else to which it can be compared. The rambootan, which 
is well figured in Mr. Barow’s work on Cochin-China, is a red 
fruit about the size of a plover’s egg, and is covered with long 
hair-like processes, whence its name, rambootan or hairy fruit. On 
removing a thin rind, lined with a substance much resembling 
white French kid, the pulp appears in the form of the plover’s 
egg, boiled and deprived of its shell. Its flavour is very agreeable, 
and apart from the mangostan would be considered excellent. The 
poloosan, in the form and flavour of its pulp, resembles the ram- 
bootan, but is thought the better fruit ; it differs from the rambootan 
in wanting the hairy processes. The dorian, to taste which the first 
time requires some resolution, is a large fruit of a roundish oval 
form, and in size and in the colour of its elevations on its surface, 
is not unlike the pine-apple, but is the produce of a large tree. 
The esculent part of the fruit enclosed in a thick rind, consists of a 
yellowish white pulp enveloping several large seeds. Its smell to a 
stranger is quite intolerable, and arises from sulphuretted hydrogen, 
which stains silver spoons used in eating it. Although its flavour 
is at first scarcely more agreeable, it is voraciously devoured by the 
natives, and is soon highly relished by Europeans, who lose the con- 
sciousness of its odour. 
Pine apples, cocoa nuts, and the bread fruit, are too well known to 
require any description ; and with respect to their abundance I have 
only to remark, it would be difficult to name either fruit or vegetable 
that is so common in England as they are in Java. 
Beyond the bazaar, I entered on the road, lined on both sides 
with tall trees, chiefly the Canarium commune , growing on the banks 
of canals, always filled at an early hour with natives of both sexes. 
The women had on a kind of petticoat, which reached above the 
breasts ; the men were entirely naked. The dwellings of these 
people, formed of bamboo and the leaves of palm, and sheltered 
from the sun by the various shade of palms, mangostans, and 
bananas, stretched in long lines on the banks of the canal. In a 
plantation of cocoa nuts and sugar trees I drank of a liquor called 
