This peculiar vegetable production, which was first noticed by Captain Cook a century ago and is indigenous to the island, is termed by botanists the Pringlea antiscorbutica, and belongs to the order of plants classed as the Cruciferae, which embraces the common cabbage of every household garden, the radish, and the horse-radish—to the latter of which the Kerguelen cabbage is the most closely allied, on account of its hot pungent taste when eaten raw as well as from its habit and mode of growth.
Mr Meldrum could not have failed to discover and recognise it at first sight from the description he already had, for the leaves of the plant grew thick about the root and put forth an upright stem, some two to three feet high, from which proceeded shoots, like broccoli sprouts on an enlarged scale, the outer petal-like leaves of which were six to eight inches long, and of a dark olive-green hue and fleshy nature, rounded and ciliated at the margin; while the inner leaves were of a paler green that approximated to yellow in the centre, where they were crumpled together, exactly like as in the “heart” of the well-known cabbage, to which the vegetable bore a very close likeness on being first seen.
“Begorrah, it’s a cabbage, all the worruld over!” exclaimed the first mate, who had accompanied Mr Meldrum in his quest. “Sure you’d hardly know the hid ov the baste, if it was cut off, from one grown in Connemara!”
“Not quite so strong a resemblance, perhaps,” replied Mr Meldrum, smiling. “Still, there’s likeness enough to recognise its membership to the general cabbage family; but, we have yet to try how it tastes!”
“Aye, aye, sorr,” said Mr McCarthy. “The proof of the pudden’s in the aiting, sure!”
However, the Kerguelen cabbage stood this test well enough.
It was tried that very day at dinner; and, although tasting slightly acrid and hot flavoured when raw, on being cooked in the same water in the copper in which some salt pork had been boiled, it seemed not very much dissimilar to the native home-grown article commonly known as “greens.”
“I guess, mister, it air downright prime, an’ no mistake,” said Mr Lathrope, passing opinion on its qualities; “and more’n that, it fills a feller up fine!”
“Begorrah, it’s jist like bacon and greens!” observed Mr McCarthy.
The majority of the men, too, relished it greatly. It was a long time since any of them had tasted fresh meat much less vegetables, by reason of the Nancy Bell not having stopped at any port on her way after leaving England; so, thenceforth, both on account of its antiscorbutic as well as from its “filling up” qualities, the plant invariably formed a leading feature in the dietary scale of the castaways; Snowball never failing to have a plentiful supply of “cabbage” to cook when meal times came round, or else he or somebody else in fault for its absence, would have to “tell the reason why!”