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^ fi'om fifteen to thirty feet in heig'ht; but very 

 larg-e in bulk, varying* fi*om six to eig-ht feet in 

 circumference j they had larg-e fan-shaped leaves, 

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

 a dioecious palm, the female plants bearing* an 

 immense quantity of round fruit, about the size of a 

 g*reeng*ag'e plum, of a purple colour, and rather 

 disagTeeable flavour ; the pulp covering* the seed was 

 very oily, and not a leaf to be seen on an}^ of the 

 fruit-bearing* plants ; the whole top consists of 

 branches full of ripe and unripe seeds. Bushels of 

 seeds Avere 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 fii*eely 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 fom' feet and half in the narrowest. These 

 leaves were split by 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 larg*er 

 proportion of annual grasses, the perennial g'rass 

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

 with an annual Ipomcea, of very strong* growth, — 

 the leaves and blossoms were withered, but I ob- 



