THE PIRITU PAI/M.-TBEE. 



the expedition for settling the boundaries. The Indians a. 

 a little more civilized here than in the rest of the missions 

 and we found to our surprise a blacksmith of the native race. 

 In the mission of San Fernando, a tree which gives a pecu- 

 liar physiognomy to the landscape, is the piritu or pirijao 

 palm. Its trunk, armed with thorns, is more than sixty feet 

 high ; its leaves are pinnated, very thin, undulated, and 

 frizzled towards the points. The fruits of this tree are very 

 extraordinary; every cluster contains from fifty to eighty; 

 they are yellow like apples, grow purple in proportion as they 

 ripen, two or three inches thick, and generally, from abor- 

 tion, without a kernel. Among the eighty or ninety species 

 of palm-trees peculiar to the New Continent, which I 

 have enumerated in the * Nova Genera Plantarum JEqui- 

 noctialium,' there are none in which the sarcocarp is developed 

 in a manner so extraordinary. The fruit of the pirijao 

 furnishes a farinaceous substance, as yellow as the yolk of an 

 egg, slightly saccharine, and extremely nutritious. It is 

 eaten like plantains or potatoes, boiled or roasted in the 

 ashes, and aifords a wholesome and agreeable aliment. The 

 Indians and the missionaries are unwearied in their praises 

 of this noble palm-tree, which might be called the peach- 

 palm. We found it cultivated in abundance at San Fer- 

 nando, San Balthasar, Santa Barbara, and wherever we 

 advanced towards the south or the east along the banks of 

 the Atabapo and the Upper Orinoco. In those wild regions 

 we are involuntarily reminded of the assertion of Linnaeus, 

 that the country of palm-trees was the first abode of our 

 species, and that man is essentially palmivorous.* On 

 examining the provision accumulated in the huts of the 

 Indians, we perceive that their subsistence during several 

 months of the year depends as much on the farinaceous fruit 

 of the pirijao, as on the cassava and plantain. The tree bears 

 fruit but once a year, but to the amount of three clusters, 

 consequently from one hundred and fifty to two hundred 

 fruits, 



* Homo habitat intra tropicos, vescitar palmis, lotophagus; hospitatur 

 extra tropicos sub novercante Cerere, carnivorus. " Man dwells uatu. 

 rally within the tropics, and lives on the fruits of the palm-tree ; ha 

 eansts in other parts of the world, and there makes shift to feed on corn 

 and flesh." (Syst. Nai., vol. i, p. 24.) 



