227 



The first historian of the New World, or at least the first who 

 described the trees in much detail, was Gonzalo Fernandez de 

 Oviedo y Valdes, who fi-om 15 14 to 1556 served in various 

 capacities as an officer of the Spanish government in Darien, 

 Cartagena, Nicaragua, and Espafiola (Santo Domingo or Haiti). 

 In I 526, he published a " Sumario de la natural y general historia 

 de las Indias," in the course of which he remarks that " the 

 largest tree that I have seen in these parts or in others was in 

 the province of Guaturo." * (He had been speaking of the 

 " Tierra-Firme " and " Darien " and this province was doubtless 

 in the region of the Isthmus.) This great tree had " three roots 

 or parts in a triangle after the manner of a trivet and a space of 

 more than twenty feet was left open between each of these three " 

 basal parts, which were also very high. There is nothing, how- 

 ever, in the further details of this description about the bearing 

 of " wool," and nothing perhaps which would absolutely exclude 

 the possibility of its being a large buttressed Stcradia. But in the 

 first part of Oviedo's " Historia general y natural de las Indias," 

 originally published in 1535, there is a chapter " On the tree called 

 geyba, in especial; and other big trees;"! and in this chapter, 

 which first saw the light only forty three years after the discovery 

 of America, we find vivid and rather detailed descriptions of very 

 large trees, known to the natives as " geybas," which, in our 

 opinion, could have been nothing other than the trees now known 

 by the name Ceiba pcntandra, even though two or three minor 

 inaccuracies and misconceptions are to be noted in Oviedo's 

 graphic and manifestly conscientious narrative. This description 

 is of so much interest that we venture to give below a somewhat 

 free translation of it : 



" Since writing what I have said of this great tree [/. e., the one in 

 the province of Guaturo, mentioned above] , I have seen many others 

 and much greater ones. And it seems to me that the (jeybas are for 

 the most part the largest trees of all in these Indies ; and this tree is 



* Edition seen a reprint in Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles 22 : 504. Madrid, 

 1884. 



+ El Capitan Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes. Historia general y natural 

 de las Indias, islas y tierra-firme del mar Oceano. Primera parte, lib. IX, cap. XI. 

 (In edition seen, i : 342-345. Madrid, 1851.) 



