Two years in the French West Indies. Partie 2

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grafted varieties the mangue is quite as delicious as the orange. Perhaps there are nearly as many varieties of mangoes in Martinique as there are varieties of peaches with us : I am acquainted, however, with only a few,— such as the mango-Bassignac ;—mango-pêche (or peachmango);—mango-vert (green mango), very large and oblong;—mango-gréffe;—mangotine, quite round and small; —mango-quinette, very small also, almost egg-shaped ;— mango-Zézê, very sweet, rather small, and of flattened form ; — mango-d'or (golden mango), worth half a franc each ;—mango-Lamentin, a highly cultivated variety ; — and the superb Reine-Amilie (or Queen Amelia), a great yellow fruit which retails even in Martinique at five cents apiece. VIII. . . . "Ou c'est bonhomme càtonl—ou c'est zimage, non?" (Am I a pasteboard man, or an image, that I do not eat ?) Cyrillia wants to know. The fact is that I am a little overfed ; but the stranger in the tropics cannot eat like a native, and my abstemiousness is a surprise. In the North we eat a good deal for the sake of caloric ; in the tropics, unless one be in the habit of taking much physical exercise, which is a very difficult thing to do, a generous appetite is out of the question. Cyrillia will not suffer me to live upon mangé-Créole altogether ; she insists upon occasional beefsteaks and roasts, and tries to tempt me with all kinds of queer delicious desserts as well,—particularly those cakes made of grated cocoanut and sugar-syrup (tablett-coco-rape) of which a stranger becomes very fond. But, nevertheless, I cannot eat enough to quiet Cyrillia's fears. Not eating enough is not her only complaint against me. I am perpetually doing something or other which shocks her. The Creoles are the most cautious livers in the world, perhaps ;—the stranger who walks in the sun


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