OVIEDO ON THE COCOA PALM. 263 



cups and culinary utensils. The earlier Spaniards were quite unac- 

 quainted with the part of the world where the cocoanut is of conspic- 

 uous importance as an economic plant, and it is simply an anachronism 

 to predicate in them any special zeal or anxiety to provide their West 

 Indian possessions with this palm. The accounts given by many early 

 writers on the Tropics show that it was unappreciated, as a fruit by 

 the explorers, whose quest was primarily for gold and spices, not for 

 objects of no recognized value in Europe. Such were often taken 

 home to exhibit as curiosities, but this would not be a sufficient rea- 

 son for international efforts at extending the distribution of such a 

 product. 



THE COCOA PALM IN ANCIENT AMERICA. 

 EARLY SPANISH ACCOUNTS. 



But if the probabilities are all against an early introduction of the 

 cocoa palm by the Spaniards, what may be termed the historical evi- 

 dence for the prehistoric existence of the cocoanut in tropical America 

 is more than adequate; for although none of the early writers affords 

 a direct statement that the cocoanut was here before Columbus, this 

 oversight can be understood by reflecting that nobody raised the ques- 

 tion until some generations afterwards. 



Oviedo, contemporary and friend of Christopher and Diego Colum- 

 bus, visited the Isthmus of Panama in 1515, two years after the dis- 

 covery of the Pacific Ocean. From 1520 to 1523 he was again in 

 Colombia and the West Indies and published the summary of his 

 "Natural History of the Indies" in 1526, after which he spent many 

 years in America as a high official of the Spanish crown, continuahV 

 adding to his monumental history, the manuscripts of which furnished 

 materials for numerous other writers,' but did not themselves reach 

 the press until 1851. Oviedo's account of American palms occupies 5 

 quarto pages, about half of this space being given up to a thorough 

 and circumstantial description of the appearance, structure, qualities, 

 and uses of the cocoa palm and its fruit. 



These palms or cocos are tall, and there are many of them on the coast of the 

 Southern Ocean, in the province of the cacique Chiman, and many in that which 

 they call Borica, and many more than in both places'in an island of the southern 

 gulf which is in the ocean, 100 leagues or more from the coast of Peru. 



After I wrote the account which I have mentioned (1526) I was in the province 

 and point of Borica [Costa Rica] and ate some of these cocos and carried many along 

 to Nicaragua, and I loathed them, and others did and said the same. In fact, it is a 

 food for men who work, and the very strong, and for others a little of this fruit is 

 enough, for eaten continuously as was there done is not for all stomachs. 1 



Nor is it easy to understand how the direct testimony of even one 

 such writer as Acosta should have been set aside. That historian spent 



1 Historia General y Natural de las Indias, vol. 1, p. 335 (Madrid, 1851). 



