'i r )0 THE 



Eameralda assured us, that in advancing above the Gehette 

 and the Chiguire, the juvia and cacao-trees become so com- 

 mon that the wild Indians (the Guaicas and Guaharibos) 

 do not disturb the Indians of the missions when gathering 

 in their harvests. They do not envy them the productions 

 with which nature has enriched their own soil. Scarcely 

 any attempt has been made to propagate the almendrones in 

 the settlements of the Upper Orinoco. To this the indolence 

 of the inhabitants is a greater obstacle than the rapidity 

 with which the oil becomes rancid in the amygdalifonn 

 seeds. We found only three trees of the kind at the mission 

 of San Carlos, and two at Esmeralda. These majestic trees 

 were eight or ten years old, and had not yet borne flowers. 



As early as the sixteenth century, the seeds with ligneous 

 and triangular teguments (but not the great drwpe like a 

 cocoa-nut, which contains the almonds, were known in 

 Europe. I recognise them in an imperfect engraving of 

 Clusius.* This botanist designates them under the name 

 of almendras del Peru. They had no doubt been carried, as 

 a very rare fruit, to the Upper Maranon, and thence, by 

 the Cordilleras, to Quito and Peru. The ' JXTovus Orbis ' of 

 Laet, in which I found the first account of the cow-tree, 

 furnishes also a description and a figure singularly exact of 

 the fruit of the bertholletia. Laet calls the tree totocke, 

 and mentions the drupe of the size of the human head, 

 which contains the almonds. The weight of these fruits, 

 he says, is so enormous, that the savages dare not enter the 

 forests without covering their heads and shoulders with a 

 buckler of very hard wood. These bucklers are unknown 

 to the natives of Esmeralda, but they told us of the danger 

 incurred when the fruit ripens and falls from a height of 

 fifty or sixty feet. The triangular seeds of the juvia are 

 sold in Portugal under the vague appellation of chesnuts 

 (castanas) of the Amazon, and in England under the name 



* Clusius distinguishes very properly the almendras del Peru, our 

 Bertholletia excelsa, or juvia, (fructus amygdalae -nucleo, triangularis, 

 dorso lato, in bina latera angulosa desinente, rugosus, paululum cunei- 

 for.nis) from the pekea, or Amygdala guayanica. Raleigh, who knevr 

 none of the productions of the Upper Orinoco, does not speak of thejuvuz; 

 but it appears that he first brought to Europe the fruit of the mauritis 

 palm, of which we have so often spo'ien. (Fructus elegantissimui 

 gquamosus, similk palmne-piui.) 



