218 FLORIDA FRUITS COCOA-NUTS. 



Yet even thus, so highly was it prized by the natives, 

 that for centuries a law was in force, whereby women were 

 forbidden to taste its fruit under penalty of the dire dis- 

 pleasure of their gods. But the time came when this un- 

 just and superstitious law was to be rendered null and 

 void. 



Oppressed as the native women were, they yet possessed 

 the right, in rare cases, of inheriting the chieftainship of 

 their fathers, and by one of these favored few was the 

 right to partake of the cocoa-nut won for all her sex. 

 Disregarding the threatened vengeance of the gods, as 

 launched upon her by their priests, she broke and ate one 

 of these hitherto sacred nuts, and, no evil consequences fol- 

 lowing, from that day the prohibitory law was abolished 

 throughout the Sandwich Islands. 



We have already remarked that this beautiful palm has 

 a wider geographical range than any of its kindred ; this 

 is most emphatically true. 



In India we find it growing low upon the wave-washed 

 shores, and again, less vigorously, at an elevation of six 

 hundred feet above the sea. In Venezuela it clings to 

 life at a distance of a hundred leagues from its beloved 

 ocean friend ; and yet more, even in the heart of Africa 

 it finds wherewithal to exist, although it there bears no 

 fruit. 



In striking contrast to these drooping exiles we need but 

 to look upon the little islands off the coast of Sumatra, 

 washed over by every storm, to find the cocoa-palm lifting 

 its crowned head in the joyousness of full health and vigor. 

 Nearer home we find the Brazilian coast, for a distance 

 of nearly three hundred miles, heavily fringed with these 

 noble trees, while one small island near by (that of Ita- 

 marca) yields annually three hundred and sixty thousand 

 nuts. 



