PRODUCTIONS. 



2S7 



cheap and pretty fabric ; but they had not a sufficient quantity to test it. 



Where cotton is cultivated in the province, it is sown in August, and 

 commences to give in May ; the bulk and best of the harvest is in June 

 and July. The tree will give good cotton for three years. 



Tobacco, of which that cultivated at Borba, on the Madeira, is the 

 best in Brazil, is planted in beds during the month of February. When 

 the plants are about half a foot high, which is in all the month of 

 April, they are set out ; the force of the crop is in September. The 

 plant averages four feet in height. Good Borba tobacco is worth in 

 Barra seven dollars the arroba, of thirty-two pounds ; it does not keep 

 well, and therefore the price in Para varies very much. 



The tree that gives the Brazil nut is not more than two or three feet 

 in diameter, but very tall ; the nuts, in number about twent}^, are en- 

 closed in a very hard, round shell, of about six inches in diameter. The 

 crop is gathered in May and June. It is quite a dangerous operation to 

 collect it ; the nut, fully as large and nearly as heavy as a nine-pounder 

 shot, falls from the top of the tree without warning, and would infallibly 

 knock a man's brains out if it struck him on the head. 



Humboldt says, ' ; I know nothing more fitted to seize the mind with 

 admiration of the force of organic action in the equinoctial zone than 

 the aspect of these great ligneous pericarps. In our climates the 

 cucurbitacece only produce in the space of a few months fruits of an 

 extraordinary size ; but these fruits are pulpy and succulent. Between 

 the tropics the bertholletia forms, in less than fifty or sixty days, a peri- 

 carp, the ligneous part of which is half an inch thick, and which it is 

 difficult to saw with the sharpest instrument." He speaks of them as 

 being often eight or ten inches in diameter ; I saw none so large. 



There is a variety of this tree, called sapucaia, that grows on low 

 lands subject to overflow. Ten or fifteen of the nuts, which are long, 

 corrugated, and very irregular in shape, are contained in a large outer 

 shell ; the shell, unlike that of the castanha, does not fall entire from the 

 tree, but when the nuts are ripe the bottom falls out, leaving the larger 

 part of the shell, like the cup of an acorn, hanging to the tree. The 

 nuts are scattered upon the water that at this season surrounds the 

 trees, and are picked up in boats or by wading. The bark of the nut 

 is fragile ; easily broken by the teeth ; and its substance is far superior 

 in delicacy of flavor to that of the Brazil nut. This nut as yet must 

 be scarce, or it would have been known to commerce. The tree is a 

 very large one ; the flowers yellow and pretty, but destitute of smell. 

 The wood is one of those employed in nautical construction. 



Shell lime, which is made in Para, sells in Barra for one dollar and 



