THE BBAZIL-NHT. 
4 r jO 
Esmeralda assured us, that in advancing above the G-ehette 
and the Chiguire, the juvia and cacao-trees become so com- 
mon that the wild Indians (the G uaicas and Guaharibos) 
do not disturb the Indians of the missions when gathering 
in their harvests. They do not envy them the productions 
with which nature has enriched their own soil. Scarcely 
any attempt has been made to propagate the almendrones in 
the settlements of the Upper Orinoco. To this the indolence 
of the inhabitants is a greater obstacle than the rapidity 
with which the oil becomes rancid in the amygdaliform 
seeds. We found only three trees of the kind at the mission 
of San Carlos, and two at Esmeralda. These majestic trees 
were eight or ten years old, and had not yet borne flowers. 
As early as the sixteenth century, the seeds with ligneous 
and triangular teguments (but not the great drupe like a 
cocoa-nut, which contains the almonds, were known in 
Europe. I recognise them in an imperfect engraving of 
Clusius.* This botanist designates them under the name 
of almendras del Peru. They had no doubt been carried, as 
a very rare fruit, to the Upper Marauon, and thence, by 
the Cordilleras, to Quito and Peru. The ‘ Novas Orbis ’ of 
Laet, in which I found the first account of the cow-tree, 
furnishes also a description and a figure singularly exact of 
the fruit of the bertholletia. Laet calls the tree totocke, 
and mentions the drupe of the size of the human head, 
which contains the almonds. The weight of these fruits, 
he says, is so enormous,- that the savages dare not enter the 
forests without covering their heads and shoulders with a 
buckler of very hard wood. These bucklers are unknown 
to the natives of Esmeralda, but they told us of the danger 
incurred when the fruit ripens and falls from a height of 
fifty or sixty feet. The triangular seeds of the juvia are 
sold in Portugal under the vague appellation of ehesnuts 
(castanas) of the Amazon, and in England under the name 
* Clusius distinguishes very properly the almendras del Peru, our 
Bertholletia excelsa, or juvia, (fructus amygdahe-nucleo, triangularis, 
dorso lato, in bina latera angulosa desinente, rugosus, paululum cunei- 
tor.r.is) from the pekea, or Amygdala guayanica. Raleigh, who knew 
none of the productions of the Upper Orinoco, does not speak of th e juvia; 
but it appears that he first brought to Europe the fruit of the mauritis 
palm, of which we have so often spoken. (Fructus elegantissimus, 
spuamosus, similic palnire-pini.) 
