196 Kennedy's expedition. 



trees, of the same Mnd as those I had seen in the 

 plain the day before, and which were by far the finest 

 pahns I had ever seen 5 the trunks were not very 

 high, from fifteen to thirty feet in height, but very 

 large in bulk, varying from six to eight feet ia 

 circumference; they had large fan-shaped leaves, 

 with sHghtly curved spines on the footstalk. It is 

 a dioecious palm, the female plants bearing an 

 immense quantity of round fruit, about the size of a 

 greengage plum, of a purple colour, and rather 

 disagreeable flavour ; the pulp covering the seed was 

 very oily, and not a leaf to be seen on any of the 

 fruit-bearing plants ; the whole top consists of 

 branches full of ripe and unripe seeds. Bushels of 

 seeds were lying beneath some of the trees, it seem- 

 ing that but few were eaten by birds or small 

 animals. One of our party suffered severely from 

 eating too freely of them, as they brought on 

 diarrhoea. I measured two or three of the leaves 

 of the male plants, and those not of the largest size, 

 and found them to measure six feet in the widest 

 part, and four feet and half in the narrowest. These 

 leaves were spht by the wind into segments of 

 various widths. The grass growing to the west- 

 ward of our camp was not so high as that to the 

 eastward, and appeared to consist of a larger 

 proportion of annual grasses, the perennial grass 

 growing only in tufts ; near the river it was covered 

 with an annual Ipomcea, of very strong growth, — 

 the leaves and blossoms were withered, but I oh- 



