276 MR. SPRUCE’S BOTANICAL EXCURSION 
I was too ill to go to Luzéa in an open montaria, exposed to the 
burning sun and the dews of night, but I induced a woman to go and 
procure for me the fruit and the plant. Unfortunately, she had not 
understood the extent of my requirements, and brought me only a single 
bunch of fruit and a couple of leaves. These I hope to send you 
shortly. The fruit is about the size of the wild grape, and hangs in 
similar but smaller bunches. In form it is obovato-pyriform, apiculate, 
3-lobed, the surface of each lobe being furnished with a midrib and 
reticulations like those of a leaf. The kernels are coated by a thin 
flesh of a yellow or slightly vermilion colour, which is picked off, and 
stains the hands of those who perform the operation. They are 
afterwards roasted, pounded, and made up into sticks, in the same way 
as chocolate. 
- The country of the Maués has never been accurately surveyed, and 
all the maps I have seen are much in error respecting it. A manuscript 
map in the possession of Dr. Campos of Santarem is the most correct, 
as regards the names and the relative positions of the rivers, &c.; but 
even this is very imperfect. Perhaps the Useful Knowledge Society’s 
map is nearer the truth than that of Martius, for this particular part of 
Brazil, though the latter is correct in making the Maué-acá and the 
Maué-mirí banca of one and the same river. It is difficult to ex- 
plain matters of this sort without a diagram ; but I will suppose that it 
is required to reach the Madeira from Villa Nova by what is called the 
inside passage. The course will be to enter the Ramos by the Paraná- 
mirí dos Limoés, to sail up it as far as the mouth of the Maué, up 
which we must proceed to Luzéa, where we shall find a channel called 
the Paraná-mirí de Canomá (or sometimes the Furo de Urari&), taking 
us across into the Madeira a little below Borba. In winter the water 
of the Madeira enters the Rio Canomá, and it is then alone that tbis 
passage is practicable. In the same season the Amazon enters the 
Ramos by the upper mouth; hence from the latter to the mouth 
of the Maué we have Amazon water, and from the Maué to the lower 
mouth of the Ramos, Amazon, and Madeira water intermixed. The 
Madeira, like the Amazon, is a river of white water, which explaius 
whyi in summer the waters of the Canomá and the Ramos are green, and 
is in winter white. 
On the two maps above referred to, the Ramos and the Canoma 
are erroneously represented as continuous, in the U. K. Society's map 
