286 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 
The Portuguese are also supposed by Martius and De Candolle to 
have planted the coconut in their West African settlements, but 
for this purpose they are more likely to have brought seed from 
Brazil than from the East Indies.¢ The slave trade brought about 
early and frequent communication between Angola and Brazil, and 
several travelers visited and described both countries. Martius, 
though he does not give his authorities, states that the coco palm 
was planted in the Portuguese settlements in West Africa. This 
does not prove, of course, that the coconut was unknown in West 
Africa before Portuguese times; nor on the other hand does the 
record by Marcgrave of native Congo names afford sufficient proof 
that the natives knew the palm before the time of the Portuguese 
settlements. 
The coco palm continues to be planted at the European. settle- 
ments and trading stations on the West Coast of Africa, but seems 
not to have extended itself spontaneously nor to have been adopted 
in cultivation, perhaps because very few of the agricultural natives 
live on the coast. The Kroo people of Liberia, who have maritime 
habits, were reported by Doctor Vogel to have superstitious fear 
of planting coconut palms. This belief seems still to prevail, for 
the very large Kroo town at Monrovia, though built along the beach, 
is shaded by no coco palms. 
EARLY NOTICES OF THE COCONUT PALM IN COLOMBIA. 
The presence of coconut palms in the interior of Colombia, as 
reported by Humboldt and more recent writers, was also recorded by 
Cieza de Leon, who accompanied the first overland expedition 
through Colombia. Cieza de Leon came to America in 1532 as a 
boy of 14, and after passing in military camps and marauding explora- 
tions the years that lads usually spend in school he began, at the age 
of 22, the writing of a history, “because others of more learning 
were too much occupied in the wars to write.” Nevertheless, the 
writings of Cieza give us a clearer picture of the condition of the 
country and the people than do those of any of the learned historians 
@Cassava and Indian corn, capsicum, peanuts, alligator pears, pineapples, and 
doubtless other American plants, including American types of cotton, appear to have 
been introduced into West Africa by the Portuguese at very carly dates, and are now 
widely distributed in that continent. The coconut has remained of little importance 
in Africa, not being utilized as a source of oil, that of the oil palm (Elaeis) being of 
better quality and more easily obtainable. 
6 The inhabitants [of Cape Palmas] believe, that whoever plants a Cocoa-palm will 
die, before it produces fruit (i. e., in about seven years). The Chief of the fishermen 
yielded at last to the entreaties of the American Governor, and put some Cocoa-nuts 
on the ground: he then drove cattle over the spot, that he might not incur the con- 
sequences of planting and covering them with earth!’’—Hooker, W. J., Niger Flora, 
p. 37. (London, 1849.) 
