3 8 *
THE GOLD COAST
vegetables on the Gold
down : the plantain,1 not least among them very go
allowed to become ripe, and then cut in o °"SJ . when
and properly fried; the banana, which surpasse
served in the same manner, or beaten up and mixed w th nee,
butter, and eggs, and baked. Eggs, by ^ way, ac^
the great mass of native testimony, lectioneering than
in a state that makes them more „ j was
culinary purposes, and I shall never ¿ojg ^ ^
once among, who, whenever I They
“ r B: h m r t V ^ y x
™ stories and industriously catalogue t h e sour-sop, guava,
g ' T t s w « " o W .X r n d aU T u « .e r e d and
beet e-hunt in t flow„ at your head,
farm and placing one foot under the tough vine of a surtarm,
ana, piucn g herbaee, you plant
X ^ ^ is human
W Then ih e Y a r e " also aUigator-pears, limes, and oranges.
^ S i r S S H r “
TH E PAW-PAW 39
There is something about those oranges I should like to have
explained. They are usually green and sweetish in taste, nor
have they much white pith, but now and again you get a big
bright yellow one from those trees that have been imported,
and these are very pithy and in full possession of the flavour
o f verjuice. They have also got the papaw on the Coast, the
Carica papaya of botanists. It is an insipid fruit. To the
newcomer it is a dreadful nuisance, for no sooner does an old
coaster set eyes on it than he straightway says, “ Paw-paws
are awfully good for the digestion, and even if you just hang
a tough fowl or a bit of goat in the tree among the leaves, it
gets tender in no time, for there is an awful lot of pepsine
in a paw-paw,”— which there is not, papaine being its active
principle. After hearing this hymn of praise to the papaw
some hundreds of times, it palls, and you usually arrive at
this tired feeling about the thing by the time you reach the
Gold Coast, for it is a most common object, and the same
man will say the same thing about it a dozen times a day if
he gets the chance. I got heartily sick o f it on my first
voyage out, and rashly determined to check the old coaster in
this habit of his, preparatory to stamping the practice out.
It was one of my many failures. I soon met an old coaster
with a papaw fruit in sight, and before he had time to start,
p boldly got away with— “ The paw-paw is awfully good for
the digestion,” hoping that this display of knowledge would
impress him and exempt me from hearing the rest o f the
formula. But no. “ Right you are,” said he solemnly. “ It’s
a powerful thing is the paw-paw. Why, the other day we had
a sad case along here. You know what a nuisance young
assistants are, bothering about their chop, and scorpions in
their beds and boots, and what not and a half, and then,
when you have pulled them through these, and often enough
before, pegging out with fever, or going on the fly in the
native town. Did you know poor B— ? W e l l! he’s dead
now, had fever and went off like a babe in eight hours though
he’d been out fourteen years for A— and D— . They sent
turn out a new book-keeper, a tender young thing with a
dairymaid complexion and the notion that he’d got the
indigestion. He fidgeted about it something awful. One