Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/216

176 brought much more than usual to our market: but this fruit would not keep long without rotting, unless we had cut it into slices and dried it, or fermented it, as the natives do, much in the same manner as is done in Europe with several species of culinary vegetables. Ever since we had been at anchor we had sufficient for our daily consumption: and we ate it with pleasure, relinquishing for it without regret our biscuit, and even the small allowance of fresh bread, which was usually served out to us every day, though this was of a very good quality. We preferred the bread-fruit to yams; but the natives, who came to dine with us, seemed to eat them almost indiscriminately. Our cook commonly boiled it for us; yet it would have tasted much better had he taken the trouble to bake it in the oven.

This fruit is nearly of an oval shape, about a foot long, and eight inches thick. The whole is eatable, except a very thin rind, with which it is covered, and a small portion at the centre, where the cells terminate. These contain no seeds, but are full of a very nutritious pulp, easy of digestion, sufficiently agreeable to the taste, and which we always ate with fresh pleasure. During eight months of the year this tree produces its fruits, which, ripening one after another,