Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/106

86 to surpass in flavor "all the other fruits of the world." Crawford said that it tasted like "fresh cream and filberts," a description which conjures up the cloying modern fantasia of English-walnut kernels in a mayonnaise. Another great one has said that "to eat durians is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East to experience"; and Dr. Ward, in his "Medical Topography of the Straits," says: "Those who overcome the prejudice excited by the disagreeable, fetid odor of the external shell reckon it delicious. From experience I can pronounce it the most luscious and the most fascinating fruit in the universe; the pulp covering the seeds, the only part eaten, excels the finest custards which could be prepared by either Ude or Kitchener." One sees the monster retailed in segments in every passer; the natives are always munching it inconveniently to windward of one, and they not only praise it, but write poems to it, and respectfully salute the tree they see it growing on. This fruit of discordant opinions hangs high upon a tall tree, and is never picked, but allowed to fall to the ground when it becomes perfectly ripe. A falling durian is justly dreaded and guarded against by the natives, who tell of men whose shoulders have been lacerated and heads half crushed by the sudden descent of one of these great green cannon-balls. Its unpleasant odor is said to come with age, and they tell one that a freshly fallen durian is free from such objection; but the watched durian never falls, I found, after maintaining the attitude of the fox toward the grapes for a reasonable time before a durian-tree.

The papaya, a smaller custard-fruit, with unpleasant