38 



HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



round with long, hard, and very fliarp thorns. Its 

 branches have the figure of an elegant feather, between 

 which its fruit hangs in clufters, being round, large as 

 the common walnut, and like it confiding of four parts, 

 that is a ikin at firft green and afterwards blackifli, a 

 yellow pulp fhrongly adhering to the flone, a round and 

 very hard ftonc, and within the ft one a kernel or white 

 fubftance. 



The Ixhuatl is fmaller and has not more than fix or 

 feven branches, for as foon as a new one buds, one of 

 the old ones withers. Of its leaves they made bafliets 

 and mats, and at prefent they moke hats, and other con- 

 veniences of them. The bark to the depth of three fin- 

 gers, is nothing but a mafs of membranes, about a foot 

 long, thin and flexible, but alfo ftrong ; of a number of 

 which joined together, the poor people make mattrefifes. 



The palm Teoiczotl is alfo fmall. The fubftance of 

 the trunk which is foft, is furrounded with leaves of a 

 particular fubftance, round, grofs, white, fmooth, and 

 Ihining, which appears like fo many ftiells heaped upon 

 each other, with which, formerly the Indians, as they do 

 now, adorned the arches of leaves which they made for 

 their feftivals. 



There is another palm, which bears cocoas or nuts of 

 oil, fo called, (termed by the Spaniards C@cos de Aceite) ; 

 becaufe they obtain a good oil from it. The cocoa of 

 oil, is a nut in figure and in fize like the nutmeg ; within 

 which there is a white, oily, eatable kernel, covered by a 

 thin purple pellicle. The oil has a fweet fcent, but is 

 too eafily condenfed, and then becomes a white mafs, 

 foft, and white as fnow. 



For 



