e quantity of fruit that is consumed at Batavia is incredible; but
that which is publicly exposed to sale is generally over-ripe. A
stranger, however, may get good fruit in a street called Passar Pissang,
which lies north from the great church, and very near it. This street is
inhabited by none but Chinese fruit-sellers, who are supplied from the
gardens of gentlemen in the neighbourhood of the town with such as is
fresh, and excellent in its kind, for which, however, they must be paid
more than four times the market price.

The town in general is supplied from a considerable distance, where
great quantities of land are cultivated merely for the production of
fruit. The country people, to whom these lands belong, meet the people
of the town at two great markets; one on Monday, called Passar Sineeu,
and the other on Saturday, called Passar Tanabank. These fairs are held
at places considerably distant from each other, for the convenience of
different districts; neither of them, however, are more than five miles
distant from Batavia. At these fairs, the best fruit may be bought at
the cheapest rate, and the sight of them to a European is very
entertaining. The quantity of fruit is astonishing; forty or fifty
cart-loads of the finest pine-apples, packed as carelessly as turnips in
England, are common, and other fruit in the same profusion. The days,
however, on which these markets are held are ill contrived; the time
between Saturday and Monday is too short, and that between Monday and
Saturday too long: Great part of what is bought on Monday is always much
the worse for keeping before a new stock can be bought, either by the
retailer or consumer; so that for several days in every week there is no
good fruit in the hands of any people but the Chinese in Passar Pissang.

The inhabitants of this part of India practise a luxury which seems to
be but little attended to in other countries; they are continually
burning aromatic woods and resins, and scatter odours round them in a
profusion of flowers, possibly as an antidote to the noisome effluvia of
their ditches and canals. Of sweet-smelling flowers they have a great
variety, altogether unknown in Europe, the chief of which I shall
briefly describe.

1. The _Champacka_, or _Michelia Champacca_. This grows upon a tree as
large as an apple-tree, and consists of fifteen long narrow petala,
which give it the appearance of being double, though in reality it is
not so: Its colour