During The Whole Summer, We Have Plenty Of Musk Melons.
I can buy
one as large as my head for the value of an English penny:
But
one of the best and largest, weighing ten or twelve pounds, I can
have for twelve sols, or about eight-pence sterling. From Antibes
and Sardinia, we have another fruit called a watermelon, which is
well known in Jamaica, and some of our other colonies. Those from
Antibes are about the size of an ordinary bomb-shell: but the
Sardinian and Jamaica watermelons are four times as large. The
skin is green, smooth, and thin. The inside is a purple pulp,
studded with broad, flat, black seeds, and impregnated with a
juice the most cool, delicate, and refreshing, that can well be
conceived. One would imagine the pulp itself dissolved in the
stomach; for you may eat of it until you are filled up
to the tongue, without feeling the least inconvenience. It is so
friendly to the constitution, that in ardent inflammatory fevers,
it is drank as the best emulsion. At Genoa, Florence, and Rome,
it is sold in the streets, ready cut in slices; and the porters,
sweating under their burthens, buy, and eat them as they pass. A
porter of London quenches his thirst with a draught of strong
beer: a porter of Rome, or Naples, refreshes himself with a slice
of water-melon, or a glass of iced-water. The one costs three
half-pence; the last, half a farthing - which of them is most
effectual?
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