Wild strawberries, just like those at home, grow on the mountains in Jamaica, about 6000 feet up, and ripen in June. Apples, small and green, but making good sauce, are brought from the same height, and are ready in July and August. Some few peaches are grown up there also, and ripen in June or July. Grapes vary in season, according to the elevation at which they are grown; they begin to be in market in July, coming from the lowlands.
Pineapples begin about the end of April, but June is the best month for them. They are most delicious here, as they are thoroughly ripe and soft. Bananas and plantains (a large variety of banana eaten only when cooked) are ripe all the year round. The early oranges come in June, but are not really in season until October, December being the best month for them. They last until about March. Limes are in season all the year round, some trees being ready at one time, some at another. Melons are very poor here, very small, and of poor flavor, as they have no good seed apparently. They ripen in spring and summer. Bilberries ripen from June till October; and wild but poor blackberries also. Both these berries grow on the mountains from 2000 feet up.
Of tropical fruits the variety is endless; some are good, others we do not care for. Avocado pears or alligator pears are pear-shaped, but look more like green and brown fresh figs. The skin is peeled off, and the pulp, which is green next the skin and custard-color near the seed, is about like baked custard in looks, and is eaten as a salad. The seed is very large, and confined in a loose outer husk. These are ripe now, and continue a long time in season.
Genips or hog plums are round green balls about the size of a large plum. The skin is hard, but cracks easily and slips off, leaving the pulp, which is like a grape's, and tastes a little like one. The flesh sticks fast to the seed, and you can only suck them, which is very tantalizing—but the tree holds thousands. Rose apples are very pretty, light yellow, smelling like attar of roses, and taste the same, and are insipid when raw, but delicious crystallized. They ripen in June. Granadillas are something like melons; they grow on a passion-flower vine, and ripen at different times. The pulp is sweet but rather tasteless, but combined with the seeds which are enclosed it is good in a tart jelly. Star apples are so called because when cut in two the seed division forms a five-pointed star. They are sweet, and ripen in spring.
Naseberries are dark brown inside and out, about the size of a small peach, and with a rough skin. The flesh is good, but sandy feeling to the mouth. Gold apples are brilliant yellow; white pulp and black seeds surrounded with jelly. Seeds and all are eaten. Water cocoanuts are the green nuts before the meat is formed inside. They are as large as a man's head with the husk, and you cut the top off with a machete, and drink the delicious water, cool and sweet. Sour and sweet sops and custard-apples are all more or less alike—sweetish and rather flat. Some like them.
Fred L. Hawthorne.
Garden House, Kingston, Jamaica.
An excellent morsel. The Table thanks Sir Fred.
A Visit to a Marble-Mill.
Perhaps the Table will be interested in the account of a visit I made to a large marble-mill. The block of marble, rough but regular, being in position the cutting begins. The saws, which are lowered everyday to cut just so much on the block, are held in a big wooden frame hung above the marble. These saws swing back and forth across the block, gradually cutting into it. A 2½-inch pipe above the saws pours a continual stream of sand and water over the block.