Chap. III. 
SEASONS. 
219 
do not recollect seeing cats do the same, although 
they go voluntarily to the woods to eat Tucuma, 
another kind of palm fruit. The tree, as it grows in 
clusters beside the palm-thatched huts, is a noble 
ornament, being, when full grown, from fifty to sixty 
feet in height and often as straight as a scaffold-pole. A 
bunch of fruit when ripe is a load for a strong man, and 
each tree bears several of them. The Pupunha grows 
wild nowhere on the Amazons. It is one of those few 
vegetable productions (including three kinds of mandioca 
and the American species of Banana) which the Indians 
have cultivated from time immemorial, and brought 
with them in their original migration to Brazil. It 
is only, however, the more advanced tribes who have 
kept up the cultivation. The superiority of the fruit 
on the Solimoens to that grown on the Lower Amazons 
and in the neighbourhood of Para is very striking. At 
Ega it is generally as large as a full-sized peach, and 
when boiled almost as mealy as a potatoe ; whilst at 
Para it is no bigger than a walnut, and the pulp is 
fibrous. Bunches of sterile or seedless fruits sometimes 
occur in both districts. It is one of the principal articles 
of food at Ega when in season, and is boiled and eaten 
with treacle or salt. A dozen of the seedless fruits 
makes a good nourishing meal for a grown-up person. 
It is the general belief that there is more nutriment in 
Pupunha than in fish or Vacca marina. 
The seasons in the Upper Amazons region offer some 
points of difference from those of the lower river and 
the district of Para, which two sections of the country 
