AND THE- ECONOMIC PRODUCTS OP THE ATTALEA PALMS. 39 



" There is no tropical plant which cannot be grown in great abundance 

 upon these ridges. The cohune there abounds : for miles and miles you have 

 nothing but forests of it ; and yet, with all these trees, bearing nuts from 

 which a most valuable oil can be extracted — an oil for which there would be 

 a ready market in every town of Europe and America,' — no one has yet been 

 found to turn them to a profitable account. Over these vast fields of wealth, 

 a few old negro women occasionally wander, picking up the nuts which 

 have fallen accidentally to the ground, from which, in their rude and clumsy 

 way, they manufacture as much oil, and no more, as will serve to satisfy 

 their personal wants, and purchase for them a few luxuries — such as 

 pickled pork and gin, pipes and tobacco. 



" I should be glad if some enterprising individual would undertake to 

 develop the riches of this country, and establish this new branch of trade. 

 British Honduras contains numerous navigable rivers and creeks, and on 

 the banks of all those rivers the cohune is found in abundance. The 

 River Hondo, the New River, the Northern River, the Belize, the Sibun, 

 Manatee River, Mullins' River, Sette River, Monkey River, Deep River, 

 Golden Stream, Rio Grande, Moho River, and the River Sarstoan, are all 

 navigable, and by these cohune oil could be conveyed from the place where 

 it is manufactured to the sea." 



Mr J. H Faber, Crown Surveyor of Belize, a very intelligent gentli 

 who thoroughly knows the country, also speaks about this palm as 

 follows : 



" By the latest computation, the settlement of Honduras contains 37,500 

 square miles, of which, I do not hesitate to assert, two-fifths are composed 

 of what is commonly called here cahoun ridges (corossales in Spanish). 

 These corossales, or cahoun ridges, are mostly along the tracts of the rivers, 

 and possess the richest virgin soil ; some of them are only a quarter of a 

 mile deep, while others extend to from twelve to twenty miles in depth. 

 The cahoun trees grow at an average distance of five yards from one 

 another, thereby forming arches of evergreens, which soften the rays of 

 the tropical sun, and give a majestic air to those forests whose silence is 

 only broken by the titter of bright-plumaged birds, or the solitary cries of 

 some wild animal roaming in these wildernesses. The cahoun trees yield 

 one crop every year ; this crop consists of generally three, and sometimes 

 four bunches of nuts, as close together as grapes ; the nuts are of the size 

 of a small turkey's egg, and on an average there are 800 nuts in one bunch. 

 The people here extract oil from them in the following manner : — When 

 the nuts are what they term full, they break between two stones the shell, 

 which is very hard, then pound the kernel in a wooden mortar ; the 

 sediment is then put into a boiler with water, and boiled down until all 

 the oil, or fat, floats ; they skim the oil off, fry it in an iron pot, so as to 

 disengage all the aqueous particles, and then bottle it. By this simple 

 process the average yield is one quart bottle of oil from about one hundred 

 nuts." 



