JAGO ROAD.
The custard-apple (as we call it) is a fruit as big as a pomegranate, and
much of the same colour. The outside husk, shell, or rind, is for
substance and thickness between the shell of a pomegranate, and the peel
of a seville orange; softer than this, yet more brittle than that. The
coat or covering is also remarkable in that it is beset round with small
regular knobs or risings; and the inside of the fruit is full of a white
soft pulp, sweet and very pleasant, and most resembling a custard of any
thing, both in colour and taste; from whence probably it is called a
custard-apple by our English. It has in the middle a few small black
stones or kernels; but no core, for it is all pulp. The tree that bears
this fruit is about the bigness of a quince-tree, with long, small, and
thick-set branches spread much abroad: at the extremity of here and there
one of which the fruit grows upon a stalk of its own about 9 or 10 inches
long, slender and tough, and hanging down with its own weight. A large
tree of this sort does not bear usually above 20 or 30 apples, seldom
more. This fruit grows in most countries within the tropics, I have seen
of them (though I omitted the description of them before) all over the
West Indies, both continent and islands; as also in Brazil, and in the
East Indies.
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