_Fruits_.--Of native fruits, we possess raspberries equal in flavour and not otherwise distinguishable from the English. They grow plentifully on the alluvial banks of Hunter's river, and supply a yearly Christmas feast to the birds. Oar native currants are strongly acidulous, like the cranberry, and make an excellent preserve when mixed with the raspberry. They grow on low shrubs not higher than the whortleberry bush. Our cherries are destitute both of pleasant taste and flavour, and have the stone adhering to their outside. Our native pears are tolerably tempting to the look, but defy both mastication and digestion, being the pendulous seed-pods of a tree here, and their outer husks of such a hard woody consistence, as to put the edge of even a well-tempered knife to proof of its qualities in slicing them down. The burwan is a nut much relished by our natives, who prepare it by roasting and immersion in a running stream, to free it from its poisonous qualities. The jibbong is another tasteless fruit, as well as the _five-corners_, much relished by children. The wild potato strongly resembles the species now in use in Europe, but the stem and leaf are essentially different. It grows on the loose flooded alluvial margins of the rivers, and at one period of the year composes the chief sustenance of the natives, having the watery look and taste of the yam. Of foreign fruits now climatized we possess a great variety. Here are oranges, lemons, citrons, nectarines, apricots, peaches, plums, cherries, figs, loquats, grenadillos, quinces, pears, apples, mulberries, pomegranates, grapes, olives, raspberries, strawberries, bananas, guavas, pineapples, and English and Cape gooseberries and currants. Of shell-fruits we have the almond, walnut, chestnut, and filbert; and of other garden fruits, strawberries, melons, peppers, &c. Melons and pumpkins will absolutely overrun you, if you do not give them most bounteous scope, and you need want neither water nor musk-melons for six or eight months yearly on an average, if you duly time the sowings. Nothing can exceed their rich juiciness and flavour, and the rapidity of their growth is almost miraculous, when a few showers of rain temper the hot days. The pumpkin makes an excellent substitute for the apple in a pie, when soured and sweetened to a proper temper by lemons and sugar. The black children absolutely dance and scream when they see one, pumpkin and sugar being their delight. To the half of a shrivelled pumpkin hanging at the door of my tent on my first essay in settling, one of our sooty satyrs could do nothing for some minutes but fidget and skip; and with his eyes sparkling, and countenance beaming with ecstacy, exclaim, "Dam my eye, _pambucan_; dam my eye, _pambucan_!" such being the nearest point they can attain to the right pronunciation of their favourite _fruit_.