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Updated: May 18, 2025
The Kling said something to the Malay, who stooped down, and solemnly produced what looked like a great spiney nut, about as large as a boy's head. "That durian, sahib," said the Kling, smiling. "Oh, that's durian, is it?" said Tom, taking the great fruit in his hands, and turning it over and over. "Nice-looking offering for a lady," said Bob Roberts, laughing.
I was too sleepy to eat anything, and thence had twelve hours of almost unbroken slumber." Since my friend is not an enthusiast in regard to tropical fruits, his reverie is all the more reasonable. The Dyaks, who are passionately fond of the durian, distinguished it by the title of DIEN, which signifies the fruit PAR EXCELLENCE. Under such circumstances my anticipations are justifiable.
I never saw the "good" "durian" growing wild in Sarawak, but I tasted here a small wild kind with an orange centre which made me violently sick. No description of the "durian" taste can do it justice. But its smell is also past description. It is so bad that many people refuse to taste it.
Strange to say, goats, sheep, poultry, and even the royal tiger, eagerly devour the durian, of which I confess myself, notwithstanding the aforesaid smell, an admirer, in common with many of my countrymen.
The orange, cocoanut, banana, and mango are so well known as to need no special description. In addition to these, the commonest fruit are the pomelo, the mangosteen, the duku, the rambutan, and the durian. The pomelo is six or seven inches in diameter, with a smooth green exterior, not unlike that of a water-melon; the fruit is pink in colour, and easily breaks up into sections.
Rubber is still a source of income to the Malays and Dayaks, and the rattan and bamboo, on which the very existence of the natives depends, grow everywhere. The sago-palm and a great number of valuable wild fruits are found, such as the famous durian, mangosteen, lansat, rambutan, and others.
The durian, mangustin, rambutan, proya, chabi, kachang, timon, jambu, kniban, beside the nanka or jack, tamarind, pomplemose, orange, lemon, and citron, all the kindred varieties of the plantain, banana, melon, annanas, pomegranate, &c., are found on Borneo.
Then one bright morning, well supplied with fresh provisions, and, to Mark's great delight, with an ample store of fruit from bananas, of three or four kinds, to pine-apples, the delicious mangosteen, and the ill-odoured durian, with its wooden husk, delicate custard, and large seeds the ship continued her course.
In ascending Durian and other fruit trees which branch at from thirty to fifty feet from the ground, I have seen them use the Bamboo pegs only, without the upright Bamboo which renders them so much more secure.
Here also there was a little mountain covered with fruit-trees, and there were some magnificent Durian trees close by the house, the fruit of which was ripe; and as the Dyaks looked upon me as a benefactor in killing the Mias, which destroys a great deal of their fruit, they let us eat as much as we liked; we revelled in this emperor of fruits in its greatest perfection.
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