264 ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE COCOA PALM. 
seventeen years in America—from 1570 to 1587—and had extensive 
personal acquaintance with Panama, Peru, and Mexico. His numer- 
ous histories and theological works were mostly written in a Jesuit 
monastery on the shores of Lake Titicaca, and he had the opportunity 
of drawing for information upon the numerous and intelligent mem- 
bers of this order, several others of whom wrote contemporary histo- 
ries of American countries, though seldom exhibiting Acosta’s wide 
interest in nature. 
It were not possible to reckon all the fruites and trees at the Indies, for that I 
remember not many, and there are many more whereof I have no knowledge; and 
in my opinion, it were troublesome to speake of all those IT now remember 
yet do T not thinke it good to passe away under silence the Cocos or Indian palmes, 
by reason of a very notable propertie it hath. I call them palmes, not properly, or 
that it bears dates, but that they are trees like to other palmes. They are high and 
strong, and the higher they grow the broader they stretch out their branches. These 
Cocos yield a fruit which they likewise call Cocos, whereof they commonly make 
vesselles to drinke in, and some they say have a vertue against poison, and to cure the 
paine in the side. The nutte and meate being dried, is good to eate, and comes 
neare in taste to greene chestnuttes. When the Coco is tender upon the tree, the 
substance within it is, as it were, milke, which they drink for daintines, and to refresh 
them in time of heate. I have seene of these trees in San Juan de Puerto Rico, and 
other parts of the Indies, and they report a wonderful thing, that every moneth or 
Moone, this tree casts forth a new branch of this Cocos; so as it yeeldes fruite twelve 
times in the yeere, as it is writte in the Apocalips: and in truth this seems like unto 
it, for that all the branches are of different ages, some beginning, others being ripe 
and some half ripe. These Cocos are commonly of the forme and bignes of a small 
melon.! 
Acosta later devotes a special chapter to the plants introduced to 
America by the Spaniards, and thus we have both direct and indirect 
evidence that the idea that the Spaniards brought the cocoanut was not 
rife in his day. Cieza de Leon, who traveled in South America between 
1582 and 1550, and who wrote the first sailing directions for the Pacific 
coast, Mentions an ‘island of Palms” off the coast of Colombia, near 
Buenaventura. 
Thence the coast trends S. | EK. to Cape Corrientes, and following the same course 
vessels arrive at the island of Palms, so called from the quantities of those trees which 
grow on it. It is little more than a league and a half around. It has rivers of fresh 
water, and used to be inhabited. This island is 25 leagues from Cape Corrientes, 
in 44°.? 
Oviedo also describes the port of Buenaventura as 5 leagues from 
the ‘isla de Palmas.” and it is evidently the same island to which 
Dampier refers in his account of the same coast. 
From Cape Corrientes to the great river of Bonaventura is twenty-three leagues. 
In the midway is the Island Palmas, which is a small, woody island, and hath a 
sand on the southeast side, stretching from one end of the island to the other.? 
' Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, Hakluyt ed., pp. 252, 253. 
(London, L8s0. ) 
* Travels of Cieza de Leon, 1532-1550, Hakluyt ed., p. 20 (1864). 
*Dampier’s Voyage (London, 1729). 
