Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/451

1770 Water melons (Cucurbita citrullus) are plentiful and good, as are also (11) pumpkins (Cucurbita pepo), which are certainly almost or quite the most useful fruit which can be carried to sea, keeping without any care for several months, and making, with sugar and lemon-juice, a pie hardly to be distinguished from apple-pie, or with pepper and salt, a substitute for turnips not to be despised. (12) Papaws (Carica papaia): this fruit when ripe is full of seeds, and almost without flavour; but while green, if pared, the core taken out, and boiled, is also as good or better than turnips. (13) Guava (Psidium pomiferum) is a fruit praised much by the inhabitants of our West Indies, who, I suppose, have a better sort than we met with here, where the smell of them alone was so abominably strong, that Dr. Solander, whose stomach is very delicate, could not bear them even in the room, nor did their taste make amends, partaking much of the goatish rankness of their smell. Baked in pies, however, they lost much of this rankness, and we, less nice, ate them very well. (14) Sweet sop (Annona squamosa), also a West Indian fruit, is nothing but a vast quantity of large kernels, from which a small proportion of very sweet pulp, almost totally devoid of flavour, may be sucked. (15) Custard apple (Annona reticulata) is likewise common to our West Indies, where it has got its name, which well enough expresses its qualities; for certainly it is as like a custard, and a good one too, as can be imagined. (16) Casshew apple (Anacardium occidentale) is seldom or never eaten on account of its astringency; the nut which grows on the top of it is well known in Europe, where it is brought from the West Indies. (17) Cocoanut (Cocos nucifera) is well known everywhere between the tropics; of it are infinite different sorts: the best we met with for drinking is called calappa edjow, and easily known by the redness of the flesh between the skin and the shell.

(18) Mangostan (Garcinia mangostana). As this, and some more, are fruits peculiar to the East Indies, I shall give short descriptions of them. This is about the size of a crab apple, and of a deep red wine colour: at the top of it is a mark