Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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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.* (* Clusius distinguishes very
properly the almendras del Peru, our Bertholletia excelsa, or juvia,
(fructus amygdalae-nucleo, triangularis, dorso lato, in bina latera
angulosa desinente, rugosus, paululum cuneiformis) from the pekea, or
Amygdala guayanica.
Raleigh, who knew none of the productions of the
Upper Orinoco, does not speak of the juvia; but it appears that he
first brought to Europe the fruit of the mauritia palm, of which we
have so often spoken. (Fructus elegantissimus, squamosus, similis
palmae-pini.) 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 Maranon, and thence, by the Cordilleras, to Quito
and Peru. The Novus 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.
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