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Then in the cool of the mornings we took social walks or rides through the clove plantations, or amongst the palms, mango-trees, and orange gardens, treating pine-apples, which grew like common weeds on the roadsides, as if they were nothing better than ordinary turnips, though when placed upon the table they are certainly as delicious as any living fruit.
At this distance from the coast, where transport costs 24l. to 26l. a ton, carpenter's work must be done upon the spot. A wide, clean road, metalled with gravel, and in places bordered by pine-apples, led to store-houses of bamboo and thatch, built on either side of the way.
The principal business done at this wharf was with the West Indies, and no vessel thought of coming back from that region of fruits without a goodly store of oranges, bananas, and pine-apples, some of which, if the boys were not too troublesome, and the captain had made a good voyage, were sure to find their way into very appreciative mouths.
Our butter comes from Bangalore, and from there we obtain, peas, potatoes, French beans, tomatoes, cauliflowers, vegetable marrow, and lettuces, and also fruit, such as apples, peaches, grapes, plantains, custard apples, melons, and sometimes pine-apples. Servants on the whole are good. Most of them come from Madras.
New England fruits, as a rule, are more satisfactory to us than those of any other country, delicious as we sometimes find them in the tropics; but an exception may be safely made in favor of freshly picked, ripe, luscious bananas and pine-apples.
So, whether by bridging, leaping, or wading, we arrived at last at the little islands, and found them covered with a thick, low scrub; deep sedge, and among them Pinguins, like huge pine-apples without the apple; gray wild Pines parasites on Matapalos, which of course have established themselves, like robbers and vagrants as they are, everywhere; a true Holly, with box-like leaves; and a rare Cocoa- plum, very like the holly in habit, which seems to be all but confined to these little patches of red earth, afloat on the pitch.
Our party at length broke up; "We are all dreaming this morning," said Ryland, "it is as wise to discuss the probability of a visitation of the plague in our well-governed metropolis, as to calculate the centuries which must escape before we can grow pine-apples here in the open air."
It is a luxury almost monopolized by the rich in cities, bred under glass like their forced pine-apples and peaches. Both in city and country, the evolution of the physical harmonies which make music to our eyes requires a combination of favorable circumstances, of which alternations of unburdened tranquillity with intervals of varied excitement of mind and body are among the most important.
'It is pleasant to walk about and see the farm and gardens thriving. All being well, we shall have some 300 bananas next year, lots of sugar-canes; many fruit trees are being planted, pine-apples, coffee, &c. Guavas grow here like weeds. I don't care for these things; but the others do, and of course the scholars rejoice in them.
Campbell's tent was pitched in an orange-grove, occupying a flat on the west bank of the Teesta, close to a small enclosure of pine-apples, with a pomegranate tree in the middle. The river is a grand feature, broad, rocky, deep, swift, and broken by enormous boulders of rock; its waters were of a pale opal green, probably from the materials of the soft micaceous rocks through which it flows.