Chap. I. 
BACABA PALM. 
39 
and bearing little clusters of round fruit not larger 
than a good bunch of currants. A few of the forest 
trees had the size and strongly-branched figures of our 
oaks, and a similar bark. One noble palm grew here 
in great abundance, and gave a distinctive character to 
the district. This was the (Enocarpus distichus, one 
. of the kinds called Bacaba by the natives. It grows 
to a height of forty to fifty feet. The crown is of a 
lustrous dark-green colour, and of a singularly flattened 
or compressed shape ; the leaves being arranged on each 
side in nearly the same plane. When I first saw this 
tree on the campos, where the east wind blows with 
great force night and day for several months, I 
thought the shape of the crown was due to the leaves 
being prevented from radiating equally by the constant 
action of the breezes. But the plane of growth is not 
always in the direction of the wind, and the crown 
has the same shape when the tree grows in the shel- 
tered woods. The fruit of this fine palm ripens towards 
the end of the year, and is much esteemed by the 
natives, who manufacture a pleasant drink from it 
similar to the assai described in a former chapter, by 
rubbing off the coat of pulp from the nuts, and mixing 
it with water. A bunch of fruit weighs thirty or forty 
pounds. The beverage has a milky appearance, and 
an agreeable nutty flavour. The tree is very difiicult 
to climb, on account of the smoothness of its stem ; 
consequently the natives, whenever they want a bunch 
of fruit for a bowl of Bacaba, cut down and thus destroy 
a tree which has taken a score or two of years to grow, 
in order to get at it. 
