We
Sometimes Made Curry Or Stew Of It, Or Fried It In Slices; But It
Is No Way So Good As Simply Baked.
It may be eaten sweet or
savory.
With meat and gravy it is a vegetable superior to any I
know, either in temperate or tropical countries. With sugar,
milk, butter, or treacle, it is a delicious pudding, having a
very slight and delicate but characteristic flavour, which, like
that of good bread and potatoes, one never gets tired of. The
reason why it is comparatively scarce is that it is a fruit of
which the seeds are entirely aborted by cultivation, and the tree
can therefore only be propagated by cuttings. The seed-bearing
variety is common all over the tropics, and though the seeds are
very good eating, resembling chestnuts, the fruit is quite
worthless as a vegetable. Now that steam and Ward's cases render
the transport of young plants so easy, it is much to be wished
that the best varieties of this unequalled vegetable should be
introduced into our West India islands, and largely propagated
there. As the fruit will keep some time after being gathered, we
might then be able to obtain this tropical luxury in Covent
Garden Market.
Although the few months I at various times spent in Amboyna were
not altogether very profitable to me in the way of collections,
it will always remain as a bright spot in the review of my
Eastern travels, since it was there that I first made the
acquaintance of those glorious birds and insects which render
the Moluccas classic ground in the eyes of the naturalist, and
characterise its fauna as one of the most remarkable and
beautiful upon the globe. On the 20th of February I finally
quitted Amboyna for Ceram and Waigiou, leaving Charles Allen to
go by a Government boat to Wahai on the north coast of Ceram, and
thence to the unexplored island of Mysol.
End of V1 The Malay Archipelago by Alfred R. Wallace
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