Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/96

38 large and very juicy; we thought them good, doubtless better than any we had tasted at home, but probably Italy and Portugal produce as good, had we been there in the time of their being in perfection. Lemons and limes are like ours; sweet lemons are sweetish and without flavour. Citrons have a faint sickly taste, otherwise we liked them. Mangoes were not in perfection, but promised to be a very fine fruit; they are about the size of a peach, full of a yellow melting pulp, not unlike that of a summer peach, with a very grateful flavour; but the one we had was spoilt by a taste of turpentine, which I am told does not occur in the ripe fruit. Bananas are in shape and size like a small thick sausage, covered with a thick yellow rind, which is peeled off, and the fruit within is of a consistence which might be expected of a mixture of butter and flour, but a little slimy; its taste is sweet with a little perfume. Acajou or casshew is shaped like an apple, but larger; the taste is very disagreeable, sourish and bitter: the nut grows at the top of it. Plantains differ [from bananas] in being longer and thinner and less luscious in taste. Both these fruits were disagreeable to most of our people, but after some use I became tolerably fond of them. Mamme-apples are bigger than an English codlin, and are covered with a deep yellow skin: the pulp is very insipid, or rather disagreeable, and full of small round seeds covered with a thick mucilage, which continually clogs the mouth. Jambosa is the same as I saw at Madeira, a fruit calculated more to please the smell than the taste; the other kind is small and black, and resembles much our English bilberries in taste. Cocoanuts are so well known in England that I need only say I have tasted as good there as any I met with here. Palm nuts are of two sorts, one long and shaped like dates, the other round; both are roasted before their kernels are eatable, and even then they are not so good as cocoanuts. Palm berries appear much like black grapes; they are the fruit of Bactris minor, but have scarcely any pulp covering a very large stone, and what there is has nothing but a light acid to recommend it. There are also the fruits of several species of prickly