136 Tin: y(f/rrni:iiN mountains. 



from fifty to sixty feet in lieiglit, and often as straight as a 

 scaffold-pole. The taste of tlie fruit may be coinpared to a 

 mixture of chestnuts and cheese. Vultures devour it greedily, 

 and come in quarrelsome flocks to the trees when it is ripe. 

 Doirs will also eat it. I do not recollect seeing cats do the 

 same, though they will go into the woods to eat Tucuma, 

 another kind of palm fruit." 



" It is only the more advanced tribes," says Mr. Bates, 



" who have kept up the cultivation Bunches of sterile 



or seedless fruits " a mark of very long cultivation, as in the 

 case of the Plantain " occur It is one of the prin- 

 cipal articles of food at Ega when in season, and is boiled 

 and eaten with treacle or salt. A dozen of the seedless fruits 

 make a good nourishing meal for a full-grown person. It is 

 the general belief that there is more nutriment in Pupunha 

 than in fish, or A^aca Marina (Manati)." 



My friend Mr. Bates will, I am sure, excuse my borrowing 

 so much from him about a tree which must be as significant 

 in his eyes as it is in mine. 



So passed many hours, till I began to be tired of I may 

 almost say, pained by the appalling silence and loneliness ; 

 and I was glad to get back to a point where I could hear 

 the click of the axes in the clearing. I welcomed it just as, 

 after a long night on a calm sea, when one nears the harbour 

 aoain, one w^elcomes the sound of the children's voices and 



