The Three Voyages of Captain Cook Round the World. Vol. II. Being the Second of the First VoyageCook, James
History
The Three Voyages of Captain Cook Round the World. Vol. II. Being the Second of the First Voyage
Cook, James
Cook, James, 1728-1779 -- Travel; Explorers -- Great Britain -- Biography; Voyages around the world -- History -- 18th century
The town in general is supplied from a considerable distance, where
great quantities of land are cultivated merely for the production of
fruit. The country people, to whom these lands belong, meet the people
of the town at two great markets; one on Monday, called Passar Sineen;
and the other on Saturday, called Passar Tanabank. These fairs are held
at places considerably distant from each other, for the convenience of
different districts; neither of them however are more than five miles
distant from Batavia. At these fairs, the best fruit may be bought at
the cheapest rate; and the sight of them to an European is very
entertaining. The quantity of fruit is astonishing; forty or fifty cart
loads of the finest pine apples, packed as carelessly as turnips in
England, are common, and other fruit in the same profusion. The days
however on which these markets are held are ill contrived; the time
between Saturday and Monday is too short, and that between Monday and
Saturday too long: great part of what is bought on Monday is always much
the worse for keeping before a new stock can be bought, either by the
retailer or consumer; so that for several days in every week there is no
good fruit in the hands of any people but the Chinese in Passar Pissang.
The inhabitants of this part of India practise a luxury which seems to
be but little attended to in other countries; they are continually
burning aromatic woods and resins, and scatter odours round them in a
profusion of flowers, possibly as an antidote to the noisome effluvia of
their ditches and canals. Of sweet-smelling flowers they have a great
variety, altogether unknown in Europe, the chief of which I shall
briefly describe.
1. The _Champacka_, or _Michelia Champacca_. This grows upon a tree as
large as an apple tree, and consists of fifteen long narrow petala,
which give it the appearance of being double, though in reality it is
not so: its colour is yellow, and much deeper than that of a jonquil, to
which it has some resemblance in smell.
2. The _Cananga_, or _Uvaria Cananga_, is a green flower, not at all
resembling the blossom of any tree or plant in Europe: it has indeed
more the appearance of a bunch of leaves than a flower; its scent is
agreeable, but altogether peculiar to itself.
3. The _Mulatti_, or _Nyctanthes Sambac_. This is well known in English
hot-houses by the name of Arabian jessamine: it grows here in the
greatest profusion, and its fragrance, like that of all other Indian
flowers, though exquisitely pleasing, has not that overpowering strength
which distinguishes some of the same sorts in Europe.
4. 5. The _Combang Caracnassi_, and _Combang Tonquin_, _Percularia
Glabro_, These are small flowers, of the dog’s-bane kind, very much
resembling each other in shape and smell, highly fragrant, but very
different from every product of an English garden.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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