Storia do Mogor 265.22.4

265.22.4

I was walking up and down in the courtyard of the convent with the father prior, Frey Salvador de Nossa Senhora, when, as one of his servant boys passed below a jack-tree, one of the fruit fell and hit him on the forehead, flaying his whole face ; it swelled like a pot and he could not see, and even after the wounds were healed he remained disfigured. I must mention another fruit found in India called ananas (the pine-apple), which looks like a large pine-cone of Europe, and it has a corrugated rind. It is necessary to slice off this rind somewhat thickly to get rid of some natural depressions it has in it. The centre, when eaten, has a sweet, slightly acid, but very pleasant flavour. This fruit is heating, and if you leave a knife in it all night, the next day you will find it bitten into as if it had remained in aqua fortis. The distilled juice of this fruit is useful for dissolving stones in the kidneys and bladder, as I have found by experiment. The plant on which the fruit forms is a cubit in height ; it grows up like an ear of corn, each plant yielding no more than one fruit. The leaves are a cubit in length and two fingers in breadth, with prickly edges. In no part of India have I seen them in such quantities as in Bengal, where they were large and fine. The reason for this is that it is a low-lying and humid country.