ry beauty of form on the Jagua Palm.'

But here, as elsewhere to my great regret, I looked in vain for that
famous and beautiful tree, the Piriajo, {247} or 'Peach Palm,' which
is described in Mr. Bates's book, vol ii. p. 218, under the name of
Pupunha. It grows here and there in the island, and always marks
the site of an ancient Indian settlement. This is probable enough,
for 'it grows,' says Mr. Bates, 'wild nowhere on the Amazons. It is
one of those few vegetable productions (including three kinds of
Manioc and the American species of Banana) which the Indians have
cultivated from time immemorial, and brought with them in their
original migration to Brazil.' From whence? It has never yet been
found wild; 'its native home may possibly,' Mr. Bates thinks, 'be in
some still unexplored tract on the eastern slopes of the AEquatorial
Andes.' Possibly so: and possibly, again, on tracts long sunk
beneath the sea. He describes the tree as 'a noble ornament, from
fifty to sixty feet in height, and often as straight as a scaffold-
pole. The taste of the fruit may be compared to a mixture of
chestnuts and cheese. Vultures devour it greedily, and come in
quarrelsome flocks to the trees when it is ripe. Dogs will also eat
it. I do not recollect seeing cats do the same, though they will go
into the woods to eat Tucuma, another kind of palm fruit.'

'It is only the more advanced tribes,' says Mr. Bates, 'who have
kept up the cultivation. . . . Bunches of sterile or seedless
fruits'--a mark of very long cultivation, as in the case of the
Plantain--'occur. . . . 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 make a good nourishing meal for a
full-grown person. It is the general belief that there is more
nutriment in Pupunha than in fish, or Vacca Marina (Manati).'

My friend Mr. Bates will, I am sure, excuse my borrowing so much
from him about a tree which must be as significant in his eyes as it
is in mine.

So passed many hours, till I began to be tired of--I may almost say,
pained by--the appalling silence and loneliness; and I was glad to
get back to a point where I could hear the click of the axes in the
clearing. I welcomed it just as, after a long night on a calm sea,
when one nears the harbour again, one welcomes the sound of the
children's voices and the stir of life about the q