82 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 102 



Miarri, which flow into the Maranon; the Miarri is joined by the 

 Pinarre, the Maracu, and the Oguaieup, all mighty rivers, the home 

 of various naked tribes. With the Topinambus of Qzapararap he 

 went many leagues up the Gran Para, to the Urucara mountain range, 

 where the Indians report great wealth of gold, and that on a certain 

 peak there are the footprints of an apostle and an animal following 

 him ; and that the great River Amazon flows from the W. through 

 this region some 30 leagues away ; the Indians call it Cuhanceihuma, 

 which means women without men ; they likewise call the river up 

 which he went with the Topinambu Indians as far as Carrupap and 

 the mountains of Itacuatiara, Araraup, which means stone of (many) 

 colors. These tribes are 4 days' journey from the Amazon, and the 

 same Indians report that beyond the Amazon, not many suns, there 

 are people with clothing and a government, Capt. Roque de Chaves 

 Ossorio likewise confirms my description of the archipelago of 

 Maranon islands, for the time when he passed through them, and 

 also the fact that one passes through the channels between the 

 Pacaxas Islands to the Gran Para from the Amazon without going 

 out to sea, for he saw it all with his own eyes. This gentleman was 

 born in Mexico, where his forebears took part in the conquests ; the 

 French carried him ofif from Brittany, where they had arrested him 

 in a harbor as a spy ; when they were fighting with the Pacaxas 

 Indians, they left him among them at Qzapararap, and returned to 

 the Maranon, where the city of Sao Luiz and the island of Todos 

 Santos are located ; but as I relate in this chapter, they were driven 

 out of the country by Capt. Maj. Jeronimo de Alburquerque. 



Chapter XXII 



Of the Extraordinary Fruit Growing in the Indies, and of That 

 on the Island of Trinidad. 



224. In the Indies the land is in general very fertile and produc- 

 tive, particularly in all the hot countries, in which many sorts of 

 well-flavored fruit are usually raised ; they have fruit on the trees 

 the whole year through, as will be described in the following note- 

 worthy cases. 



225. The banana or plantain is a spongy sort of tree, very dififerent 

 from other trees ; it is about the thickness of a man's thigh, or a little 

 more. It bears fruit only once, each shoot or sprout putting forth a 

 bunch of 40 or 50 bananas, more or less ; and when it is ripe they 

 cut ofif both the bunch and the tree, and it is of no further use ; and 

 although this tree does not bear more than once in its life, as they 



