Siam is verily the queen of the tropics in regard to the abundance, variety and unequaled lusciousness of her fruits. Here are found those of China, greatly enriched in tint and flavor by being transplanted to this warmer climate; and those of Western Asia, in this fruitful soil far more productive than in the sterile regions of Persia and Arabia; while numberless varieties from the Malayan and Indian archipelagoes, united with the host of those indigenous to the country, complete a list of some two hundred or more species of edible fruits. In this clime of perennial freshness trees bear nearly the year round, and so productive is the soil that the annual produce is almost incredible. The tax on orchards alone yields to the Crown a revenue of some five millions of dollars per annum, as I was informed by the late "second king" of Siam. It is not unusual to find on a single branch the bud and blossom, together with fruit in several different stages. Thus, at the merest trifle of expense a table may be supplied during the entire year with forty or fifty specimens of fresh, ripe fruit. Among these are many varieties of oranges and pineapples, pumeloes, shaddocks, pawpaws, guavas, bananas, plantains, durians, jack-fruit, melons, grapes, mangoes, cocoa-nuts, pomegranates, soursaps, linchies, custard-apples, breadfruit, cassew-nuts, plums, tamarinds, mangosteens, rambustans, and scores of others for which we have no names in our language. Tropical fruits are generally juicy, sweet with a slight admixture of acid, luscious, and peculiarly agreeable in a warm climate; and when partaken of with temperance and due regard to quality they are highly promotive of health. For this reason Booddhists regard the destruction of a fruit tree as quite an act of sacrilege, and their sacred books pronounce a heavy malediction on those who wantonly commit so great a crime. One who has tasted the fruits of the tropics only at a distance from the soil that produces them can form no conception of the real flavor of plums and grapes that never felt the frosty atmosphere of our northern clime; of oranges plucked ripe from the fragrant stem and eaten fresh while the morning dew still glitters on their golden-tinted cheeks; of the rare, rosy pomegranate juice, luscious as nectar.
After eating the fruits of all climes, I place the mangosteen at the head of the list as absolutely perfect in flavor and fragrance. The fruit is spherical in form, about the size of a small orange, of a rich crimson-purple hue without, and filled with a succulent, half-transparent pulp that melts in the mouth. There are three species of the mangosteen tree, but of only one, the Garania mangostina, is the fruit edible. The others are valuable for timber, and the bark for the manufacture of a dye that resists the attacks of every sort of insect.
Next to the mangosteen I should name the custard-apple (Anona squamosa), a rich and delicate fruit of the form and dimensions of a medium-sized quince, but made up of lesser cones, each with its apex directed toward the centre, and each containing a smooth black seed. The pulp is pure white, about the consistency of a baked custard, and in flavor very like strawberries and cream.
The delicious soursap is very similar to the custard-apple, but of larger size and slightly acid in taste. The bearded, rosy rambustan (Nephelium lappaceum) looks like a mammoth strawberry, but when the outer hairy covering has been removed a semi-transparent pulp is revealed, in taste so similar to our best Malaga grapes that a blind man would be unable to distinguish them.
Pineapples are good and abundant all over South-eastern Asia, but are in their perfection at Singapore and Malacca, weighing frequently four pounds or more. Passing, one warm afternoon, along the Singapore bazaar, I noticed a Chinese fruit-dealer who had among other delicacies outspread before him the largest and finest pineapples I had ever seen. As I inquired the price, the Celestial, after a long harangue on the extraordinary excellence of his wares, and the trouble he had taken to obtain them, expressed a hope that he should not be considered extortionate in selling them so very high, the price demanded for a whole four-pound pineapple, peeled, sliced, and ready for eating, being the equivalent of half a cent! The ordinary, medium-sized fruit could be purchased, he knew, at one-fifth of that sum, and his conscience, no doubt, was chiding him for extortion.
One of the most singular-looking fruits is the jack-fruit (Artocarpus integrifolia), growing in all its immensity of thirty or forty pounds weight directly out of the largest branches or on the stem of the huge tree. Externally, it has a rough, pale-green coat: internally, it has a luscious, golden-hued pulp, in which are embedded a dozen or more smooth, oval seeds about the size of large chestnuts, which they strikingly resemble in flavor.
The mango (Mangifera Indica) is a drupe of the plum kind, four or five inches long, and three at least in diameter. Greenish-colored outside, and not very inviting, you are most agreeably surprised at the rare, rich flavor of the bright yellow pulp that adheres like the clinging peach to a large flat seed.
The gamboge tree (Stalagmitis Cambogioides) grows luxuriantly in Siam, and also in Ceylon. It has small narrow, pointed leaves, a yellow flower, and an oblong, golden-colored fruit. Even the stem has a yellow bark, like the gamboge it produces. The drug is obtained by wounding the bark of the tree, and also from the leaves and young shoots. The natives say that they have sold it to white foreigners for hundreds of years past; and we know it was introduced into Europe early in the seventeenth century.
The plantain (Musa paradisaica) is one of the best gifts of Providence to the teeming multitudes of tropical lands, living, as many of them do, without stated homes, and gathering food and drink as they find them on the roadside and in the jungle. Under a friendly palm the simple peasants find needed shelter from the sun by day and the dews by night, while a bunch of plantains or bananas plucked fresh from the tree will furnish an abundant meal, and the water of a green cocoa-nut all the drink they desire. The plantain tree grows to about twenty feet in height, its round, soft stem being composed of the elongated foot-stalks of the leaves, and its cone of a nodding flower-spike or cluster of purple blossoms that are very graceful and beautiful. Like the palms, this tree has no branches, but its smooth, glossy leaves are from six to eight feet in length and two or more in breadth. At the root of a leaf a double row of fruit comes out half around the stalk; the stem then elongates a few inches, and another leaf is deflected, revealing another double row; and so on, till there come to be some thirty rows containing about two hundred plantains, weighing in all sixty or seventy pounds. This mammoth bunch is the sole product of the tree for the time: after the fruit is plucked the stalk is cut down, and another shoots up from the same root; and it is thus constantly renewed for many successive years. The incalculable blessing of such a tree in regions where the intolerable heat renders all labor oppressive may be conceived from the estimate of Humboldt, who reckons the surface of ground needed to the production of four thousand pounds of ripe plantains to suffice for the raising of only thirty-three pounds of wheat or ninety-nine pounds of potatoes. What would induce the indolent East Indian to make the exchange of crops?
The cassew-nut (Anacardium occidentale) is remarkable as the only known fruit of which the seed grows on the outside. A full-grown tree is twenty feet high, with graceful form and widespread branches. The leaves are oval, and the beautiful crimson flowers grow in clusters. The fruit is pear-shaped, of a purplish color outside and bright yellow within; and the seed, which is in the form of a crescent, looks just as if it had been stuck on the bur end, instead of growing there. When roasted the kernels are not unlike a very fine chestnut.