t of my day in watching,
and now and then directing, the work that went on during the whole of
the sunlight, and not unfrequently during the night, upon my farm.
Davilo, the superintendent, had engaged no fewer than eight
subordinates, who, with the assistance of the ambau, the carvee, and
the electric machines, kept every portion of the ground in the most
perfect state of culture. The most valuable part of the produce
consisted of those farinaceous fruits, growing on trees from twenty to
eighty feet in height, which form the principal element of Martial
food. Between the tropics these trees yield ripe fruit twice a year,
during a total period of about three of our months--perhaps for a
hundred days. Various gourds, growing chiefly on canes, hanging from
long flexile stalks that spring from the top of the stem at a height
of from three to eight feet, yield juice which is employed partly in
flavouring the various loaves and cakes into which the flour is made,
partly in the numerous beverages (never allowed to ferment, and
consequently requiring to be made fresh every day), of which the
smallest Martial household has a greater variety than the most
luxurious palace of the East. The best are made from hard-skinned
fruits, whose whole pulp is liquified by piercing the rind before the
fruit is fully ripe, and closing the orifice with a wax-like
substance, almost exactly according to a practice common in different
parts of Asia. The drinks are made, of course, at home. The
farinaceous fruits are sold to the confectioners, who take also a
portion of the milk and all the meat supplied by the pastures. Many
choice fruits grow on shrubs, ranging from the size of a large black
currant tree to that of the smallest gooseberry bush. Vines growing
along the ground bear clustering nuts, whose kernels are sometimes as
hard as that of a cocoa-nut, sometimes almost as soft as butter. The
latter with the juicy fruits, are preserved if necessary for a whole
year in storehouses dug in the ground and lined with concrete, in
which, by chemical means, a temperature a little above the
freezing-point is steadily maintained at very trivial cost. The number
of dishes producible by the mixture of these various materials, with
the occasional addition of meat, fish, and eggs, is enormous; and it
is only when some particular compound is in special favour with the
master of the house that it makes its appearance more than perhaps
once in ten days upon t