Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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We Asked Them To Explain To Us This Operation, Which We
Had Already Seen Practised In The Missions Of The Cataracts.
The vine
of the country is the palma dolce, the Cocos butyracea, which, near
Malgar, in the valley of
The Magdalena, is called the wine palm-tree,
and here, on account of its majestic height, the royal palm-tree.
After having thrown down the trunk, which diminishes but little
towards the top, they make just below the point whence the leaves
(fronds) and spathes issue, an excavation in the ligneous part,
eighteen inches long, eight broad, and six in depth. They work in the
hollow of the tree, as though they were making a canoe; and three days
afterwards this cavity is found filled with a yellowish-white juice,
very limpid, with a sweet and vinous flavour. The fermentation appears
to commence as soon as the trunk falls, but the vessels preserve their
vitality; for we saw that the sap flowed even when the summit of the
palm-tree (that part whence the leaves sprout out) is a foot higher
than the lower end, near the roots. The sap continues to mount as in
the arborescent Euphorbia recently cut. During eighteen to twenty
days, the palm-tree wine is daily collected; the last is less sweet
but more alcoholic and more highly esteemed. One tree yields as much
as eighteen bottles of sap, each bottle containing forty-two cubic
inches. The natives affirm that the flowing is more abundant when the
petioles of the leaves, which remain fixed to the trunk, are burnt.
The great humidity and thickness of the forest forced us to retrace
our steps and to gain the shore before sunset. In several places the
compact limestone rock, probably of tertiary formation, is visible. A
thick layer of clay and mould rendered observation difficult; but a
shelf of carburetted and shining slate seemed to me to indicate the
presence of more ancient formations. It has been affirmed that coal is
to be found on the banks of the Sinu. We met with Zambos carrying on
their shoulders the cylinders of palmetto, improperly called the
cabbage palm, three feet long and five to six feet thick. The stem of
the palm-tree has been for ages an esteemed article of food in those
countries. I believe it to be wholesome although historians relate
that, when Alonso Lopez de Ayala was governor of Uraba, several
Spaniards died after having eaten immoderately of the palmetto, and at
the same time drinking a great quantity of water. In comparing the
herbaceous and nourishing fibres of the young undeveloped leaves of
the palm-trees with the sago of the Mauritia, of which the Indians
make bread similar to that of the root of the Jatropha manihot, we
involuntarily recollect the striking analogy which modern chemistry
has proved to exist between ligneous matter and the amylaceous fecula.
We stopped on the shore to collect lichens, opegraphas and a great
number of mosses (Boletus, Hydnum, Helvela, Thelephora) that were
attached to the mangroves, and there, to my great surprise,
vegetating, although moistened by the sea-water.
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