fruits, which taste like our Norwich pears; mangoes, in shape and colour like our apricots, but more luscious, and ananas or pine-apples, to crown all, which taste like a pleasing compound of strawberries, claret-wine, rose-water, and sugar.  In the northern parts of the empire, they have plenty of apples and pears.  They have every where abundance of excellent roots, as carrots, potatoes, and others; also garlic and onions, and choice herbs for sallads.  In the southern parts, ginger grows almost every where.

I must here mention a pleasant clear liquor called taddy, which issues from a spungy tree, growing straight and tall without boughs to the top, and there spreads out in branches resembling our English colewarts.  They make their incisions, under which they hang small earthenware pots; and the liquor which flows out in the night is as pleasant to the taste as any white wine, if drank in the morning early, but it alters in the day by the sun’s heat, becoming heady, ill-tasted and unwholesome.  It is a most penetrating medicinal drink, if taken early and in moderation, as some have experienced to their great happiness, by relieving them from the tortures of the stone, that tyrant of maladies and opprobrium of the doctors.

At Surat, and thence to Agra and beyond, it only rains during one season of the year, which begins when the sun comes to the northern tropic, and continues till he returns again to the line.  These violent rains are ushered in, and take their leave, by most fearful tempests of thunder and lightning, more terrible than I can express, but which seldom do any harm.  The reason of this may be the subtile nature of the air, breeding fewer thunder-stones, than where the air is grosser and more cloudy.  In these three months, it rains every day more or less, and sometimes for a whole quarter of the moon without intermission.  Which abundance of rain, together with the heat of the sun, so enriches the soil, which they never force by manure, that it becomes fruitful for all the rest of the year, as that of Egypt is by the inundations of the Nile.  After this season of rain is over, the sky becomes so clear, that scarcely is a single cloud to be seen for the other nine months.  The goodness of the soil is evident from this circumstance, that though the ground, after the nine months of dry weather, looks altogether like barren sands, it puts on an universal coat of green within seven days after the rains begin to fall.  Farther to confirm this, among the many hundreds of acres I have seen in corn in India, I never saw any that did not grow up as thick as it could well stand.  Their ground is tilled by ploughs drawn by oxen; the seed-time being in May or the beginning of June, and the harvest in November and December, the most temperate months in all the year.  The ground is not inclosed, except near towns and villages, which stand very thick.  They do not mow their grass for hay as we do; but cut it either green or withered, when wanted.  They sow abundance of tobacco, but know not the way to cure it and make it strong, as is done in America.