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JOURNEY FROM THE RIO DOCE 



sweetish bitter taste, and is extremely cooling and refreshing. In 

 this country many good dishes are prepared from this admirable gift 

 of nature : thus for instance, they scrape the nut and boil it with 

 scarlet beans, to which it gives a very agreeable flavour ; they also 

 make excellent preserves of it, with sugar and spices, but which un- 

 fortunately will not bear the voyage to Europe. A cocoa- tree some- 

 times bears a hundred nuts at once, which are valued at about five or 

 six dollars: so that a plantation of three or four hundred of these 

 trees produces a considerable revenue. A healthy tree is sold for 

 4000 reas, or about a guinea. The wood of the tree is also useful, 

 for it is hard and tough ; the trunk therefore does not easily break in 

 a high wind, but bends and creaks violently. The roots spread hori- 

 zontally under the surface of the earth, and form a thick texture. 

 From the Peruipe, southwards, to Rio de Janeiro, the genuine cocoa- 

 palm fcocos imcifera, Linn.) is extremely rare; but from Vifoza, 

 northwards, especially at Belmonte, Porto Seguro, Caravellas, Ilheos, 

 feahia, &c. it is very common ; on the whole east coast it bears the 

 name of cocos de Bahia. This tree seems to be particularly fond of 

 salt water, for it thrives best where the sand of the coast is washed by 

 the spray of the sea*. A protuberance which the trunk of this species 

 has when young, at the lower extremity, makes it easy to be know^n. 

 In going by water to Caravellas, the eye is often charmed with the sight 

 of groves of high cocoa-trees, beneath the dark shade of which the rural 

 habitations make a very picturesque appearance. The bank is entirely 

 covered with mangrove trees ( conocarpiis and avicennia ), the bark of 

 which is of great use in tanning, and is sent for that purpose to Rio 

 de Janeiro. A tanner of that city keeps a number of slaves on the 

 Caravellas merely to strip off and to dry whole cargoes of mangrove 



* We find a confirmation of this in Humboldt's Travels, vol. I. 



