136 JOURNAL. 



to an open space; where three or four picturesque cottages, with 

 gardens and a few fields, occupied a diminutive plain, enclosed by 

 steep woody mountains, where the palms that give name to the 

 valley first appeared. The gardens are pretty extensive, but are 

 chiefly occupied by strawberry beds. The fields are newly ploughed, 

 and the cattle were grazing on the lower slopes of the surrounding 

 hills : two or three palms rise from out the hedges of fruit trees 

 that border the little gardens ; they are different from any of the 

 tribe I have seen, and produce a nut of the shape of the hazel, but 

 much larger ; the kernel is like a cocoa-nut, and, like it, when young 

 contains milk ; the leaf is larger, thicker, and richer than that of the 

 great cocoa-nut palm, and therefore better adapted for thatching, to 

 which use it is commonly applied here, and accordingly receives the 

 name of Palma Tejera ; the lower leaves are cut annually, and not 

 above two or three of the upper ones left : by this means the tall 

 straight trunk becomes crowned with a peculiar capital before the 

 leaves branch off; and this is so similar to some of the capitals in the 

 ruins of ancient Egypt, that I could not help fancying that I beheld 

 the model of their solid yet elegant architecture before me. 



This palm differs considerably from any I have seen in any part of 

 the world. The height of those I have seen when full-grown is from 

 fifty to sixty feet ; at about two-thirds of that height the stems 

 narrow considerably. The bark is composed of circular rings, knotty 

 and brown ; they are always upright, and exceed in circumference all 

 the palms I know, except the dragon tree : the spathe containing the 

 flower is so large, that the peasants use it to hold various domestic 

 articles ; and it is shaped so exactly like the canoes of the coast, that 

 I think it must have served as the model for building them. I have 

 not seen the flower, but, like most of the tribe, the male and female 

 flowers are produced on different plants ; and trees bearing the nuts 

 are more respected by the natives, who do not cut the leaves, or at 

 least do not so completely strip the trees of them as they do the 

 barren plants. Perhaps, however, the accident of a palm growing 

 within the limit of the fields may account for this, and that the 



