CHAPTER X

Summary

The Darion-tree nearly resembles a pear-tree in size; the fruit is as big as a melon. The Indians esteem this fruit to be one of the best and daintiest in the Indies. To those who are unaccustomed to it, it is disagreeable, having a stink like that of our onions, but the taste is far more excellent.

Ramboutans are fruits with a thorny husk like the chestnut. Their colour is red, the inside of the size of a walnut, furnished with a kernel like an almond and of similar taste; over this is a flesh or pulp of a very agreeable taste, which melts in the mouth. This fruit is greatly esteemed in the Indies.

The Jaques is a tree of the height of a chestnut, which produces a fruit as big as a pumpkin. It is attached all round the trunk of the tree, not at the end of the branches, as all other fruits are; at a distance one might say they were big pumpkins fastened to the tree. The outside is like a pine-cone of a yellow colour. When ripe it is very sweet to the taste, yet over-laxative. Within and about the fruit, in place of a nut or pip, you find a number of chestnuts as good and tasty as those of France; and these, contrary to the nature of the fruit, are of a binding quality.