^ 



8 M. J. C. DE MELLO AKD ME. B, SPRUCE ON PAPATACE^. 



h 



I suppose tte West-India Islands to be the true native country 

 of tlie common Papaw ; for it was found there abundantly at the 

 time of the discovery of America. Thence it had spread south- 

 ward across the continent, along with the tide of emigration 

 that seems to have continually surged in that direction from the 

 earliest ages ; for I have reason to believe that it grows nowhere 

 wild on the mainland*. The earliest trustworthy account of 

 it is in Oviedo's ' Historia Greneral y Natural de las Indias* 

 (lib. viii. cap. 33), which I have translated and condensed as 



follows t : 



" Of the tree which in this island, Hispaniola, they call Ta- 

 paya^ and in Terra-firma Sigos del Mastuergo^ and in the province 



of Nicaragua, Olocotan. 



" In the western part of Terra-firma, in Veragua, and in islands 



adjacent to the coast, there are certain Pig-trees, tall, straight, 

 and with a single unbranched trunk, which sends out at the top 

 stout leaves, much broader than those of the Pig-trees of Cas- 

 tillo, on stalks half a fathom or more long. The figs, which are 

 as big as melons, are stuck on the upper part of the trunk in 

 great numbers ; they have a thin skin, and inside that a thick 

 flesh, like that of a melon, only not so firm ; it is well-tasted, and 

 is cut into slices like a melon. In the middle are the seeds, in 

 a mass the size of a hen's egg ; they are small and black, and are 

 enveloped in a sort of humour like that of the seeds of quinces, 

 but more viscid. They are wholesome to eat, and have exactly 

 the taste of Mastuer90 {Troj^ceolum majus); while the fig without 

 the seed is sweet ; whence the Christians of Terra-firma call these 

 fruits ' Higos del Mastuergo ' [which is, as we might say in Eng- 



glish, "Nasturtium Figs "] Here [in Hispaniola] they are 



called * Papaya,' and in the Government of Nicaragua ' Olocoton.' 

 There is, even, a province, between the province of Nogrando and 

 that of Honduras, which is called Olocoton, where there are many 

 of these Pig-trees. They have a trunk as thick as a man^s body, 

 straight, and without a single branch ; this is the common form ; 

 but there are others of the very same fruit which, when the tnmk 



* In the Eastern PeruTian Andes, near Tarapoto, at the height of 2000 feet, 

 I have seen <? plants of C. pa^a^a come up in a continuous growth covering 

 some acres, upon a deserted clearing in the forest. It looked, when young, 

 like a vast bed of hollyhocks ; and when the plants had reached 10 feet high, 

 they began to flower. Yet, although the seed had obviously fallen on a con- 



truly 



The 



