266 ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE COCOA PALM. 



Velasco, in his eagerness to vindicate his country's claim to the " Hatun-Chonta, " 

 or great palm, as the Indians call it, gets very angry with those who dispute it. 

 "One may see," he says, "with what levity some authors relate a thousand false- 

 hoods like Francisco Hernandez, a native of Mexico, who in his Latin history 

 asserts that cocos were transplanted from the East to the West Indies by the Span- 

 iards; whereas on their first arrival they found cocos laden with fruit, which is never 

 seen on stems less than from 16 to 20 years old." 



INTRODUCTION TO ATLANTIC COASTS. 



The theory of the Spanish introduction of the cocoanut to America 

 has been supported by references to Sloane, Martius, Piso, Marcgraf, 

 and others, who give more or less distinct testimonj^ to the effect that 

 the Spaniards and Portuguese introduced it into Jamaica, Guiana, 

 Brazil, and West Africa. But no discredit to these witnesses is im- 

 plied in the supposition that the cocoanuts were not brought from 

 Spain, where there were none, but from the American continent, 

 where we have such excellent reasons for believing that there were 

 many. The numerous Spanish expeditions to Mexico, Central America, 

 and Peru were accustomed to make long visits for refitting their ships, 

 both going and coming, at Santo Domingo and Jamaica. What would 

 be more natural than that the early colonists would secure cocoanuts 

 in this way, as well as cacao and other plants which they had from the 

 American mainland? 



AMERICAN NAMES OF THE COCOANUT. 



The origin of the name cocoa or coco, as the earlier writers used it, 

 seems to have remained quite as obscure as that of the tree itself. 

 Oviedo refers to the fruit of several species of palms as "cocos," and 

 seems to have been the first to record the fanciful idea that that word 

 was applied to the cocoanut because the three foramina or "eyes" 

 suggest the grimace of monkey, a notion which Hernandez and 

 many subsequent writers have ascribed to the Portuguese, and 

 some lexicographers have derived coco from a Portugese name for 

 monkey, macaco or macoco. Others have thought to trace it to the 

 Greek kovki (kouki), and even to an ancient Egyptian word/ L '?/X*«, which 

 was formerly thought to apply to the cocoanut; and although Seeman 

 furnished in 1868 excellent reasons for believing that at least the 

 Egyptian reference does not apply to the cocoanut, but to Borassus 

 aethiqpum, 1 the Egyptian theory is still repeated in the latest editions 

 of our most popular dictionaries. Nor did anybody attempt to show 

 that either Hernandez, Acosta. or any of their contemporaries was 

 acquainted with either the Greek or the Egyptian words, or that they 

 were familiar with the cocoanut before coming to America. Hernan- 



1 Flora Yitiensis, pp. 275-27S. Borasms aethiopum stands in the Index Keaensis as 

 a synonym of _B. JldbeUifer of the East Indies. Drude admits (Engler and Prantl, 

 Naturlichen PflanzenfamUien) but one species of Borassus, distributed in cultivation 

 from Senegambia to Ceylon, Hindustan, and the Sunda Islands. 



