At a distance it had the appearance of one entire orchard of fruit trees,
where were mingled together the pyramidal orange, in fruit and in flower,
the former in all its stages from green to dropping ripe,--the citron,
lemon, and lime--trees, the stately, glossy--leaved star--apple, the
golden shaddock and grape--fruit, with their slender branches bending
under their ponderous yellow fruit,--the cashew, with its apple like
those of the cities of the plain, fair to look at, but acrid to the taste,
to which the far--famed nut is appended like a bud,--the avocada, with its
brobdignag pear, as large as a purser's lantern,--the bread--fruit, with a
leaf, one of which would have covered Adam like a bishop's apron, and a
fruit for all the world in size and shape like a blackamoor's head; while
for underwood you had the green, fresh, dew--spangled plantain, round
which in the hottest day there is always a halo of coolness,--the coco
root, the yam and granadillo, with their long vines twining up the
neighbouring trees and shrubs like hop tendrils,--and peas and beans, in
all their endless variety of blossom and of odour, from the Lima bean,
with a stalk as thick as my arm, to the mouse pea, three inches high,--the
pineapple, literally growing in, and constituting, with its prickly
leaves, part of the hedgerows,--the custard--apple, like russet bags of
cold pudding,--the cocoa and coffee bushes, and the devil knows what all,
that is delightful in nature besides; while aloft, the tall graceful
cocoa--nut, the majestic palm, and the gigantic wild cotton--tree, shot up
here and there like minarets far above the rest, high into the blue
heavens.
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