is so plentiful, that it sells, when well refined,
for two-pence a pound, or less. Their fruits are numerous, excellent,
abundant, and cheap; as musk-melons, water-melons, pomegranates,
pomecitrons, lemons, oranges, dates, figs, grapes, plantains, which are
long round yellow 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