An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon in the East Indies: Together with an Account of the Detaining in Captivity the Author and Divers other Englishmen Now Living There, and of the Author's Miraculous EscapeKnox, Robert
History
An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon in the East Indies: Together with an Account of the Detaining in Captivity the Author and Divers other Englishmen Now Living There, and of the Author's Miraculous Escape
Knox, Robert
Sri Lanka -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Sri Lanka -- Social life and customs
[Roots for Food.] Some of these are for Food, and some for Medicine. I
begin with their Roots, which with the Jacks before mentioned,
being many, and generally bearing well, are a great help towards
the sustenance of this People. These by the Chingulays by a general
name are called Alloes, by the Portugals and us Inyames. They are of
divers and sundry sorts, some they plant, and some grow wild; those
that grow wild in the Woods are as good, onely they are more scarce
and grow deeper, and so more difficult to be plucked up. It would be
to no purpose to mention their particular names; I shall onely speak a
little in general of them. They serve both for Food, and for Carrees,
that is, sauce, or for a relish to their Rice. But they make many
a meal of them alone to lengthen out their Rice, or for want of it:
and of these there is no want to those that will take pains but to
set them, and cheap enough to those that will, buy.
[The manner of their growing.] There are two sorts of these Alloes;
some require Trees or Sticks to run up on; others require neither. Of
the former sort, some will run up to the tops of very large Trees, and
spread out very full of branches, and bear great bunches of blossoms,
but no use made of them; The Leaves dy every year, but the Roots grow
still, which some of them will do to a prodigious bigness within a
Year or two's time, becoming as big as a mans wast. The fashion of
them somewhat roundish, rugged and uneven, and in divers odd shapes,
like a log of cleft wood: they have a very good, savoury mellow tast.
Of those that do not run up on Trees, there are likewise sundry sorts;
they bear a long stalk and a broad leaf; the fashion of these Roots
are somewhat roundish, some grow out like a mans fingers, which they
call Angul-alloes, as much as to say Finger-Roots; some are of a
white colour, some of a red.
Those that grow in the Woods run deeper into the Earth, they run up
Trees also. Some bear blossoms somewhat like Hopps, and they may be
as big as a mans Arm.
[Boyling Herbs.] For Herbs to boyl and eat with Butter they have
excellent good ones, and several sorts: some of them are six months
growing to maturity, the stalk as high as a man can reach, and being
boyled almost as good as Asparagus. There are of this sort, some having
leaves and stalks as red as blood, some green: some the leaves green,
and the stalk very white.
[Fruits for sawce.] They have several other sorts of Fruits which
they dress and eat with their Rice, and tast very savoury, called
Carowela, Wattacul, Morongo, Cacorebouns, &c. the which I cannot
compare to any things that grow here in England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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