160 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



burg grapes that they are served after dinner on the table in the 

 place of grapes. And their taste is as diversified as possible — 

 f;;r more so than are the different varieties of grapes. Some of 

 these bunches are purplish in color, some are sweet to the taste, 

 and some have an aromatic flavor besides, and indeed a variety 

 which is quite surprising ; while others are farinaceous, and 

 really remind us of the different kinds of nuts which we use for 

 the table ; and in addition to that they have a fleshy envelope, 

 which gwes an appearance to the fruit exactly like that of a fine 

 peach. There is one kind of palm, known under the name of 

 Pupunha, which the English of Guiana have called the peach 

 palm, which produces bunches of fruit about a foot and a half 

 in length, each bunch containing from thirty to fifty fruits, and 

 each fruit about the size of an ordinary peach, delicious to the 

 palate — a singular combination of the sweet and mealy taste — 

 which is capable of being prepared in various forms. Tliey are 

 eaten whole, they are eaten cooked, they are prepared in various 

 forms, and they make a most exquisitely transparent and 

 aromatic oil. 



While these palms are so striking, some of them, for their 

 regularity of form, tliere are others which constitute vines, 

 creeping like our smilax among the bushes, and extending for a 

 great length in that way, while the stem is hardly thicker than 

 the little finger, and so flexible and so durable that in most con- 

 structions the Indians use them in the place of cordage. They 

 use these slender stems of palms as we use rope, and they 

 may be applied for all similar purposes to great advantage. It 

 i« of them, also, that they make a variety of tissues, and it is of 

 the more pliable and finer fibres that they weave their hammocks 

 and tlie different fabrics which they wear. So that the palm 

 supplies the native Indians, the inhabitants of those forests, with 

 everything. It gives him the rafters for his house, the wood for 

 his canoe, the fibre for all the uses to which he is capable of 

 applying it ; it gives him the various articles of food he wants ; 

 it gives him the means of covering himself; and many of them 

 furnisli in addition a kind of wax, of great excellence, which, if 

 introduced into our commerce, would be of great value for the 

 manufacture of candles and the like. 



I know of nothing that is more attractive than this family of 

 palms and the great variety of their products ; and I believe it 



