COW-TREE. 



155 



rise, our travellers were astonished at the number of 

 boats which they saw laden with fruit for the mar- 

 ket. They returned to the valleys of Aragua, and 

 again stopped at the farm of Barbula. Having 

 heard of a tree, the juice of which resembles milk, 

 and is used as an article of food, they visited it, and 

 to their surprise found that the statements which 

 had been made to them with respect to it were cor- 

 rect. It is named the palo de vaca or cow-tree, and 

 has oblong pointed leaves, with a somewhat fleshy 

 fruit containing one or sometimes two nuts. When 

 an incision is made in the trunk, there issues abun- 

 dantly a thick glutinous milky fluid, perfectly free 

 from acrimony, and having an agreeable smell. It 

 is drunk by the negroes and free people who work 

 in the plantations, and the travellers took a consid- 

 erable quantity of it without the least injurious 

 effect. When exposed to the air, this juice presents 

 on its surface a yellowish cheesy substance, in mem- 

 branous layers, which are elastic, and in five or six 

 days become sour, and afterward putrefy. 



The cow-tree appears to be peculiar to the littoral 

 cordillera, and occurs most plentifully between Bar- 

 bula and the Lake of Maracaybo. 



"Among the many curious phenomena," says 

 Humboldt, " which presented themselves to me in 

 the course of my travels, I confess there were few 

 by which my imagination was so powerfully affected 

 as the cow-tree. All that relates to milk and to the 

 cereal plants inspires us with an interest, which is 

 not merely that of the physical knowledge of things, 

 but which connects itself with another order of ideas 

 and feelings. We can hardly imagine how the hu- 

 man species could exist without farinaceous sub- 

 stances, and without the nutritious fluid which the 

 breast of the mother contains, and which is appro- 

 priated to the condition of the feeble infant. The 

 amylaceous matter of the cereal plants, — the object 

 of religious veneration among so many ancient and 



