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vegetable ivory palm. Delicious tliey are, and precious, to monkeys 

 and parrots, as well as to the Oroonoco Indians, among whom the 

 the Tamanacs, according to Humboldt, say, that when a man and 

 woman survived that great deluge, which the Mexicans call the 

 age of water, they cast behind them, over their heads, the 

 fruits of the Moriche palm, as Deucalion and Pyrrha cast stones, 

 and saw the seeds in them produce men and women, who re-peo- 

 pled the earth. No wonder, indeed, that certain tribes look on 

 this tree as sacred, or that the missionaries should have named it 

 the tree of life." 



Humboldt describes them thus : — " In the season of inundations 

 these clumps of Mauritia, with their leaves in the form of a fan, 

 have the appearance of a forest rising from the bosom of the waters. 

 The navigator in proceeding along the channels of the delta of the 

 Oroonoco at night, sees with surprise the summit of the palm- 

 trees illumined by large fires. These are the habitations of the 

 Guaraons, which are suspended from the trunks of the trees. These 

 tribes hang up mats in the air, which they fill with earth, and 

 kindle on a layer of moist clay the fire necessary for their house- 

 hold wants. They have owed their liberty and their political in- 

 dependence for ages to the quaking and swampy soil, which they 

 pass over in the time of drought, and on which they alone know 

 how to walk in security to their solitude in the delta of the Oroo- 

 noco, to their abode on the trees. The Mauritia palm-tree, the 

 tree of life of the missionaries, not only affords the Guaraons a safe 

 dwelling during the risings of the Oroonoco, but its shelly fruit, 

 its farinaceous pith, its juice abounding in saccharine matter, and 

 the fibres of its leaf stalks, furnish them with food, wine, and 

 thread proper for making cords and weaving hammocks. It is 

 curious to observe in the lowest degree of human civilization the 

 existence of a whole tribe depending on one single species of palm- 

 tree, similar to those insects which feed on one and the same flower 

 or on one and the same part of a plant." 



A. R. Wallace goes into more detail as regards the uses of this 

 palm : — " The leaves, fruit and stem of this tree are all useful to the 

 natives of the interior. The leaf-stalks are applied to the same pur- 

 poses as the Jupati, (Baphia tcedigera). The epidermis of the 

 leaves furnishes the material of which the string for hammocks, 

 and cordage for a variety of purposes, is made. The unopened 

 leaves form a thick pointed column rising from the very centre of 

 the crown of foliage. This is cut down, and by a little shaking 

 the tender leaflets fall apart. Each one is then skilfully stripped 

 of its outer covering, a thin riband-like pellicle of a pale yellow 

 colour which shrivels up almost into a thread. These are then tied 

 in bundles and dried and are afterwards twisted by rolling on the 

 breast or thigh into string, or with the fingers into thicker cords. 

 The article most commonly made from it is the " rede," or netted 

 hammock, which is the almost universal bed of the native tribes of 

 the Amazon. These are formed by doubling the string over two 

 rods or poles about six or seven feet apart, till there are forty or 

 fifty parallel threads, which are then secured at intervals of about 

 a foot by cross strings twisted and tied on to every longitudinal 



