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and other Indian grains; luxuriantly diversified by crops of cotton, 
hemp, tobacco, plants for dying, and a variety of seeds for express- 
ing lamp oil; particularly the erindah, or palma-christi, which is 
also much esteemed for medicinal virtues. The wheat-fields af- 
forded me great delight; they were the first I had seen since my 
departure from England, and the harvest had begun: the corn is 
trod out by oxen, walking over the ears, as described by Homer 
<<r Where round and round, with never wearied pain, 
“ The trampling steers beat out th’ unnumbered grain.” 
The gardens produce cabbages, cauliflowers, pease, french- 
beans, artichokes, asparagus, potatoes, carrots, turnips, lettuce, and 
salads, in abundance and perfection; besides a variety of indige- 
nous roots and vegetables. Among other useful productions is a 
vegetable soap, called ornlah ; the nuts grow in clusters on a wild 
tree, and tiie kernels, when made into a paste, are preferred to 
common soap for washing shawls, silk and embroidery; it lathers 
in salt water, and on that account is valuable at sea, where com- 
mon soap is of little use; retah, another vegetable soap, in the 
vicinity of Surat, has the same property. 
The wood-apple, a fruit unknown at Bombay, grows on a large 
tree, in perpetual verdure; and, like many in the torrid zone, is 
covered at the same time with blossoms and ripe fruit; the apple 
is circular, heavy, and the size of an orange, hanging perpendicu- 
larly at the extremity of long slender branches, bending with their 
weight; which gives the tree a beautiful appearance: the fruit 
smells like a mellow apple, but on breaking the wooden shell, we 
find an acid pulp, full of seeds, ate only by the poorer natives. 
