190 Kennedy's expedition. 



trees^ of the same kind as those I had seen in the 

 plain the day before^ and which were by far the finest 

 palms I had ever seen ; the trunks were not very 

 hig-h, from fifteen to thirty feet in heig-ht^ but very 

 larg-e in bulk, varying- from six to eig-ht feet in 

 circumference 5 they had larg-e fan-shaped leaves^ 

 with shg'htly curved spines on the footstalk. It is 

 a dioecious palm, the female plants bearing* an 

 immense quantity of round fruity about the size of a 

 g-reeng-ag'e plum^ of a pm*ple colour^ and rather 

 disagreeable flavour ; the pulp covering- the seed was 

 very oily, and not a leaf to be seen on any of the 

 fruit-bearing- plants ; the whole top consists of 

 branches full of ripe and unripe seeds. Bushels of 

 seeds were lying- beneath some of the trees^ it seem- 

 ing- that but few were eaten by birds or small 

 animals. One of our party suffered severely from 

 eating* too freely of them^ as they broug-ht on 

 diarrhoea. I measured two or three of the leaves 

 of the male plants^ and those not of the larg-est size^ 

 and found them to measure six feet in the widest 

 part^ and four feet and half in the narrowest. These 

 leaves were split b}^ the wind into seg-ments of 

 various widths. The g-rass g'rowing- to the west- 

 ward of our camp was not so hig"h as that to the 

 eastward^ and appeared to consist of a larger 

 proportion of annual grasses^ the perennial grass 

 growing- only in tufts ', near the river it was covered 

 with an annual Iporncea, of very strong growth^ — 

 the leaves and blossoms were Avithered^ but I ob- 



