Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/448

390 dry. How far this kind of rice might be useful in our West Indian islands, where they grow no bread corn at all, I leave to the judgment of those who know their respective interests, as also the question whether the cassava, or manioc, their substitute for bread, is not as wholesome and cheaper than anything else which could be introduced among them.

Besides rice they grow also Indian corn or maize, which they gather when young and toast in the ear. They have also a vast variety of kidney beans and lentils, called cadjang, which make a great part of the food of the common people. They have millet, yams, both wet and dry, sweet potatoes and some European potatoes, not to be despised, but dear. Their gardens produce cabbage, lettuce, cucumbers, radishes, China white radishes, which boil almost as well as turnips, carrots, parsley, celery, pigeon-pease (Cytissus cajan), kidney beans of two sorts (Dolichos chinensis and lignosus), egg plants (Solanum melongena), which eat delicately when boiled with pepper and salt, a kind of greens much like spinach (Convulvulus reptans), very small but good onions, and asparagus, scarce and very bad. They had also some strong-smelling European plants, as sage, hyssop and rue, which they thought smelt much stronger here than in their native soils, though I cannot say I was sensible of it. But the produce of the earth from which they derive the greatest advantage is sugar; of it they grow immense quantities, and with little care have vast crops of the finest, largest canes imaginable, which I am inclined to believe contain in an equal quantity a far larger proportion of sugar than our West Indian ones. White sugar is sold here for about 2¼d. a pound. The molasses makes their arrack, of which, as of rum, it is the chief ingredient; a small quantity of rice only, and some cocoanut wine, being added, which I suppose gives it its peculiar flavour. Indigo they also grow a little, but I believe no more than is necessary for their own use.

The fruits of the East Indies are in general so much cried up by those who have eaten of them, and so much preferred to our European ones, that I shall give a full list of all the sorts which were in season during our stay, and