202 



hacienda de coco, as of a hacienda de canna, or 

 de cacao. In a fertile and moist ground, the 

 cocoa-tree begins to bear fruit in abundance the 

 fourth year ; but in dry soils it yields produce 

 at the end of ten years only. The duration of 

 the tree does not in general exceed eighty or a 

 hundred years ; and it's mean height at this pe- 

 riod is from seventy to eighty feet . This rapid 

 growth is so much the more remarkable,, as 

 other palm-trees, for instance, the nioriche% 

 and the palm of Sombrero f, the longevity of 

 which is very great, frequently do not reach 

 above fourteen or eighteen feet in sixty years. 

 In the first thirty or forty years, a cocoa- tree 

 of the Gulf of Cariaco bears every lunation a 

 cluster of ten or fourteen nuts, all of which 

 however do not ripen. It may be reckoned, 

 that, on an average, a tree produces annually 

 a hundred nuts, which yield eight fiascos % of 

 oil. The fiasco is sold for two rials and a half 

 of plate, or sixteen pence. In Provence, an 

 olive-tree thirty years old yields twenty pounds, 

 or seven flascoes of oil, so that it produces some- 

 thing less than a cocoa-tree. There are in the 

 Guiph of Cariaco haciendas of eight or nine thou- 

 sand cocoa-trees. They resemble, in their pic- 



*Mauritia flexuosa. 

 f Corypha tectorum. 



+ One fiasco contains 70 or 80 cubic inches, Paris mea- 

 sure. 



