Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/104

84 such another ball of pulp within its leathery rind, and both fruits much resemble the fresh lychees of China in flavor. The salak, or "forbidden fruit," is a hard, scaly, pear-shaped thing, which very appropriately grows on a prickly bush, and whose strange brown rind reminds one of a pine-cone or a rattlesnake's skin. This scaly, snaky shell prejudices one against it; but the salak is as solid as an apple, with a nutty flavor and texture. It is not unpleasant, nor is it distinctively anything in flavor—nothing unique or delicious enough to make one seek hard or long for a second taste of it. The jamboa, the eugenia or rose-apple (Eugenia malaccensis), is a fruit of the same size and shape as the salak, and in spite of its exquisite coloring it impresses one as being an albino, a skinless or some other monstrous and unnatural product of nature. Its outer integument, thinner than any nectarine's rind, shades from snow-white at the stem to the deepest rose-pink at the blossom end, and it looks as if it were the most fragrant, delicious, and juicy fruit. One bites into the fine, crisp, succulent pulp, and tastes exactly nothing, and never forgives the beautiful, rose-tinted, watery blank for its deluding. The carambola (Averrhoa), the five-ribbed yellow "star-fruit," popularly known in real Cathay as the "Chinese gooseberry," is a favorite, fragrant study in spherical geometry, and the cutting apart of its triangular sections is the nicest sort of after-dinner amusement and demonstration; but its fine, deliciously acid pulp is usually known to one before he reaches Java. Its relative, the bilimbi, is the sharpest of acid fruits, and lends an edge to chutneys and curried conglomerates.