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 
