COOK—THE COCONUT PALM IN AMERICA. 2938 
the Valley where you go ashore, is thick set with Coco-nut Trees, which flourish here 
very finely, it being a rich and fruitful Soil. They grow also on the Skirts of the 
Hilly Ground in the Middle of the Isle, and scattereing in Spots upon the Sides of it, 
very pleasantly.¢ 
So much for the number and location of the palms. That this 
description does not, by any chance, apply to any other palm with 
which the coconut could be confused, even in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, is shown by a further incident. 
Nor did we spare the Coco-Nuts, eating what we would, and drinking the Milk, and 
carrying several Hundreds of them on board, Some or other of our Men went ashore 
every Day: And one Day among the rest, being minded to make themselves very 
merry, they went ashore and cut down a great many Coco-trees; from which they 
gather’d the Fruit, and drew about 20 Gallons of the Milk. Then they all sat 
down and drank Healths to the King and Queen, etc. They drank an excessive 
Quantity; yet it did not end in Drunkenness: But however, that Sort of Liquor had 
so chilled and benumb’d their Nerves, that they could neither go nor stand: Nor 
could they return on board the Ship, without the Help of those who had not been 
Partakers in the Frolick: Nor did they recover it under 4 or 5 Days Time.¢ 
In view of these statements the present complete, or nearly com- 
plete, extinction of the coco palm can scarcely be understood except 
as the result of the absence of human inhabitants from Cocos Island 
during the last two centuries, another example of the fact that the 
species can not compete with the vegetation of the coasts and islands 
of the humid tropics. If Cocos Island were a mere coral atoll or 
sand bar, the traditional possibility of sea-drifted coconuts could 
still be drawn upon, but it has an area of about 18 square miles and 
2 mountainous surface, the highest peak rising about 660 meters. 
When the size and topography of the island are considered and the 
presence of a considerable native flora, Wafer’s statements regarding 
the coconut groves on the slopes away from the sea would seem to 
point to clearing and planting by the hand of man though the apparent 
number of the palms may have been increased by confusion with the 
native species that grows on the mountains. 
That there were no inhabitants at the time of Wafer’s visit does 
not prove that the island had never been occupied. Even without a 
permanent population the coconuts may have been planted and 
cared for by natives of the mainland for use during fishing expeditions, 
a plan followed in some localities in the Malay region. The serious 
disturbances that followed the arrival of the Spaniards in the Panama 
region would naturally tend to interrupt such visits. Already in 
Water’s time the palms must have been abandoned long enough to 
conceal the evidences of human agency in planting them, for any more 
direct indications that the island had been inhabited would undoubt- 
edly have been noted. 
a Wafer’s New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America, in Dampier’s 
Voyage, vol. 3, pp. 379, 380. (London, 1729.) 
