20 PALM TREES 



of the Rio Negro. The next rivers, the Curicuriari, the 

 great river Uaupes, and the Isanna, though all black- 

 water, have none ; while further on, in the Xie, it again 

 appears. On entering Venezuela it is found near the 

 banks of the Rio Negro, and is abundant all up to its 

 sources, and in the Temi and Atabapo, black-water 

 tributaries of the Orinoco. This seems to be its 

 northern limit, and I cannot hear of its again appear- 

 ing in any part of the Amazon or Orinoco or their 

 tributaries. It is thus entirely restricted to a district 

 about 300 miles from N. to S. and an equal distance 

 from E. to W. I am enabled so exactly to mark out 

 its range, from having resided more than two years in 

 various parts of the Rio Negro, among people whose 

 principal occupation consisted in obtaining the fibrous 

 covering of this tree, and from whom no locality for it 

 can have remained undiscovered, assisted as they are 

 by the Indians, whose home is the forest, and who are 

 almost as well acquainted with its trackless depths as 

 we are with the well-beaten roads of our own island. 



The fibre imported into this country has been sup- 

 posed to be produced only by the Attalea funifera, a 

 species not found in the Amazon district. In the 

 London Journal of Botany for 1849, Sir W. Hooker 

 gave some account of the material, and of the tree pro- 

 ducing it ; stating that he had received the fruit of the 

 tree with the fibre from a mercantile house connected 

 with Brazil, and that the fruit was that of the Attalea 

 funifera. This species is mentioned by Martius as 

 furnishing a fibre used for cordage and other purposes 



