Meat Fruits

We hiked the morning harr away, watching it subside as we rose through highland terrain. Bagus has come down with the same fever as Winters, and so the guide whose name I cannot pronounce (Malgapy??) accompanied me to the rainforest. We arrived at the outskirts of the jungle in the early afternoon, leaving me little time to gather information and specimens. There are many signs of life up here, I've been logging details of the scat under trees. There are birds here, though I've yet to identify a novel species. Largely parrots and parakeets, perhaps slightly adapted to these highlands, but in no way noteworthy. I heard the call of something similar to a wood pigeon, which aside from giving me a warm contemplation of home, reassured me that the science of ornithology would remain a hobby of the infirm and invalids, as even in this new world it remains a dead and dreary subject… Malgapy was helpful in erecting camp, and providing a fire, however I was left in charge of finding dinner.

Mask Meatfruit, (Carofructus Phasmephigus)

The trees here are not substantially noteworthy to a man of my fascinations, though Francis should surely be seething with envy at the world of greenery before me. They are all wooded and rooted as normal trees, however there's a dazzling array of coniferous and deciduous varieties, the forest floor is a mess of leaves and needles. The trees themselves don't strike me as terribly fascinating though, as they haven't the sense to move on their own, so I instead took to using one as a viewing platform.

I climbed a lightly foliated pine tree to get a better view of our surroundings, when I found myself enthralled by a particularly strange pinecone. It took me a moment to realise that this pine cone had a small face, and teeth which were not so small. It dangled from the branch, possessing a limb with a fully enclosed loop - making it impossible to remove this creature without first breaking its 'stem'.

It did not appear to enjoy having its stem broken, reeling and shrieking as it was removed from the tree; the noise was not one which Malagapy could bear, and when presented with the pinecone - he promptly threw it in on the fire to silence it. When I tell you of the smell of this pine cone as it cooked, you should imagine duck fat dribbling from a well seared breast, and the delicate crisped skin of a chicken thigh.

This meat, being pulled so easily from the tree, has given me a  fine way to spend my afternoon, before we set out on a deeper exploration of the rainforest on the morrow. Malgapy on the other hand has taken to this task with some apparent distaste; being a Mahometan, he claims that they are not suitable for eating. I've found that these small meaty-fruit like creatures are far more content to be removed if they are first killed with a single precise stab between their eyes, and then their loops cut so they can fall from the tree without any stems remaining. Inside of these creatures there are occasionally small balls of the finest and most tender meat imaginable - the deep flavour of beef with the richness of an egg yolk. Regardless of tomorrows' travels, we will be surely returning with packs brimmed and meat aplenty.

For a task that I had otherwise been contemptuous towards, this journey uphill into the interior forests has already brought forth a veritable trove of delightful new morsels. I pray that on the morrow we will instead find ourselves, and the Royal Society, a boon of novel resources and species, so that our books may be as full as our bellies."

~ James Naysmith Robertson, 1885