[Eight Years’ Wandering in Ceylon by Samuel White Baker]@TWC D-Link bookEight Years’ Wandering in Ceylon CHAPTER X 25/58
The Palmyra.
The Kittool.
The Areca The Date.
The Sago.
The Talipot. The wonderful productions of this tribe can only be appreciated by those who thoroughly understand the habits and necessities of the natives; and, upon examination, it will be seen that Nature has opened wide her bountiful hand, and in the midst of a barren soil she has still remembered and supplied the wants of the inhabitants. As the stream issued from the rock in the wilderness, to the cocoa-nut tree yields a pure draught from a dry and barren land; a cup of water to the temperate and thirsty traveler; a cup of cream from the pressed kernel; a cup of refreshing and sparkling toddy to the early riser; a cup of arrack to the hardened spirit-drinker, and a cup of oil, by the light of which I now extol its merits-five separate and distinct liquids from the same tree! A green or unripe cocoa-nut contains about a pint of a sweetish water. In the hottest weather this is deliciously cool, in comparison to the heat of the atmosphere. The ripe nut, when scraped into a pulp by a little serrated, semi-circular iron instrument, is squeezed in a cloth by the hand, and about a quarter of a pint of delicious thick cream, highly flavored by cocoa-nut, is then expressed.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|