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Updated: June 10, 2025
On the outskirts of the towns are the gardens, enclosed by hedges of castor-oil or cactus, where many kinds of fruits and spices are grown: bananas, pineapple, guava, bael, citrons, etc., are some of the ordinary kinds, while the coco-nut, tamarind, jack, and papaya grow everywhere about the streets and houses.
Even after ten years in the Tropics, the Bishop still continued to enjoy bacon and eggs with unabated relish, and these did something, this morning, to mitigate his ill humour. A fresh papaya, with a dozen seeds left in as flavouring, also helped. Finally the boy came in and laid letters by his plate. Home letters, bearing the familiar postmarks, so dear to dwellers in outlying parts of the world.
For while they lie basking in the sun, without care of theirs, the cocoanut, the breadfruit, the yam, the guava, the banana, and the delicious papaya, which is a compound of a ripe apricot with a Cantaloupe melon, grow and ripen perpetually. Men and women are always amusing themselves, the men with surf-bathing, the women with making leis both sexes with riding, gossiping, and singing.
Further down was the Garden Glory stall selling various types of garden implements such as lawn movers, cutters, sprayers and other accessories. Apurbhai had a variety of organic manures like leaf mould, Karanji and bone meal besides ornamental plants, palms and creepers. There were pickles, squashes and medicine for papaya plants also on sale. At the far end of the corridor was the canteen.
One brought a sheep, another a milch-goat for baby, while the rest contributed, severally, a couple of cocoa-nuts, a papaya, three mangoes, a few water-cresses, a sack of sweet potatoes, a bottle of milk, three or four quinces, a bunch of bananas, a little honey, half-a-dozen cabbages, some veal and pork, and so on; until it appeared as if every little garden on either side of the three leagues of stream must have yielded up its entire produce, and we had accumulated sacks full of cocoa-nuts and potatoes, hundreds of eggs, and dozens of chickens and ducks.
His letters of this period to Fuller on the fruits of India, and to Morris on the husbandry of the natives, might be quoted still as accurate and yet popular descriptions of the mango, guava, and custard apple; plantain, jack, and tamarind; pomegranate, pine-apple, and rose-apple; papaya, date, and cocoa-nut; citron, lime, and shaddock.
Boiled when green, the papaya reminds one of vegetable marrow; and cooked when ripe, it makes a pie stuffing not to be despised. I have often hung steaks or birds in the tree, protected by a cage from pests, or wrapped them in papaya-leaves to make them tender. The very atmosphere does this, and the pepsin extracted from the papaya by science is much used by druggists instead of animal extracts.
But the mayor domo expressed his regret that he did not know we were coming, as he would gladly have killed a little pig for us. As dessert a great dish of fresh papaya cut up into squares and soaking in its own juice, was served.
Passengers were gathering, but no particular signs of the starting of a train were evident. Boys at the station were selling slabs of pudding, squares of sponge cake soaked with red liquor, pieces of papaya, cups of sweetened boiled rice, and oranges.
As gentle and caressing as a mother's lullaby, how it crooned among the foliage of the cocoanut palms, whispered among the papaya leaves, and how joyously the great blades of the bananas welcomed it! With that fair view before our eyes, with the breezes as if of Araby the Blest making mere existence a joy, we take our leave of Burma. Rangoon, Bunna.
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