[1615.—"George Durois sent in a present of two pottes of Mangeas."—Cocks's Diary, Hak. Soc. i. 79.]
" "There is another very licquorish fruit called Amangues growing on trees, and it is as bigge as a great quince, with a very great stone in it."—De Monfart, 20.
1622.—P. della Valle describes the tree and fruit at Miná (Minao) near Hormuz, under the name of Amba, as an exotic introduced from India. Afterwards at Goa he speaks of it as "manga or amba."—ii. pp. 313-14, and 581; [Hak. Soc. i. 40].
1631.—"Alibi vero commemorat mangae speciem fortis admodum odoris, Terebinthinam scilicet, et Piceae arboris lacrymam redolentes, quas propterea nostri stinkers appellant."—Piso on Bontius, Hist. Nat. p. 95.
[1663.—"Ambas, or Mangues, are in season during two months in summer, and are plentiful and cheap; but those grown at Delhi are indifferent. The best come from Bengale, Golkonda, and Goa, and these are indeed excellent. I do not know any sweet-meat more agreeable."—Bernier, ed. Constable, 249.]
1673.—Of the Goa Mango,[[161]] Fryer says justly: "When ripe, the Apples of the Hesperides are but Fables to them; for Taste, the Nectarine, Peach, and Apricot fall short...."—p. 182.
1679.—"Mango and saio (see [SOY]), two sorts of sauces brought from the East Indies."—Locke's Journal, in Ld. King's Life, 1830, i. 249.
1727.—"The Goa mango is reckoned the largest and most delicious to the taste of any in the world, and I may add, the wholesomest and best tasted of any Fruit in the World."—A. Hamilton, i. 255, [ed. 1744, i. 258].
1883.—"... the unsophisticated ryot ... conceives that cultivation could only emasculate the pronounced flavour and firm fibrous texture of that prince of fruits, the wild mango, likest a ball of tow soaked in turpentine."—Tribes on My Frontier, 149.
The name has been carried with the fruit to Mauritius and the West Indies. Among many greater services to India the late Sir Proby Cautley diffused largely in Upper India the delicious fruit of the Bombay mango, previously rare there, by creating and encouraging groves of grafts on the banks of the Ganges and Jumna canals. It is especially true of this fruit (as Sultan Baber indicates) that excellence depends on the variety. The common mango is coarse and strong of turpentine. Of this only an evanescent suggestion remains to give peculiarity to the finer varieties. [A useful account of these varieties, by Mr. Maries, will be found in Watt, Econ. Dict. v. 148 seqq.]