Page:A voyage to New Holland - Dampier.djvu/111

 Musteran-de-ovas are a round fruit as big as large hazelnuts, covered with thin brittle shells of a blackish colour: they have a small stone in the middle, enclosed within a black pulpy substance, which is of a pleasant taste. The outside shell is chewed with the fruit, and spit out with the stone, when the pulp is sucked from them. The tree that bears this fruit is tall, large, and very hard wood. I have not seen any of these five last-named fruits, but had them thus described to me by an Irish inhabitant of Bahia; though as to this last I am apt to believe I may have both seen and eaten of them in Achin in Sumatra.

Palm-berries (called here dendees) grow plentifully about Bahia; the largest are as big as walnuts; they grow in bunches on the top of the body of the tree, among the roots of the branches or leaves, as all fruits of the palm kind do. These are the same kind of berries or nuts as those they make the palm-oil with on the coast of guinea, where they abound: and I was told that they make oil with them here also. They sometimes roast and eat them; but when I had one roasted to prove it I did not like it.

Physick-nuts, as our seamen called them, are called here pineon; and agnus castus is called here carrepat: these