228 TlMEHRt. 
The uses to which the various parts of the manicole are 
put are many. The split stem is used by Indians for 
flooring huts in muddy places and in houses raised on 
piles; and these laths are also used by Creoles and East 
Indian and Chinese immigrants for making palings and 
partition walls in their houses. Smaller laths split off 
from the stem are also occasionally used, to string the 
geonoma leaves for thatch on; but laths from the 
booba palm (Socratea exorhisa. Wendl :) are preferred 
as much more durable, for this purpose. Pieces of the 
unsplit stem of the manicole are also used, after having 
been half divided in the middle and bent into the shape 
of a boat's "knee," to fasten down the thatching of the ridge 
of houses thatched with the leaves of the troolie {Manicaria 
saccifera). The thin and easily withered leaves of the 
manicole itself are seldom used as thatch, and then 
only for temporary huts, erefted by Indians while 
travelling. Bundles of the easily procured leaves are 
also often used to cover and shelter hammocks and other 
properties in the Indians' canoes. The cabbage when 
boiled makes a most excellent vegetable, tasting like 
thistle-artichokes ; but this fact seems little known, and 
the article is seldom made use of in this colony, either 
by Indians or others. From the ripe fruit an excellent 
chocolate-like drink is easily and occasionally, but here 
seldom, prepared. The inner skin of the spathe is used, 
instead of paper, for cigarettes, by the Arawak and 
Warrau Indians; whereas the Carib tribes more com- 
monly use for this purpose layers of the bark of a forest 
tree {Lecythis). 
[£. oleracea, Mart: — According to SCHOMBURGK this 
