The Leaf Is Long And Slender, Like That Of A Sword Lilly, Or
Flag.
The boughs stand out from the top of the tree on all sides, rather
more than a yard long, beset on both sides with strong sharp prickles,
like saw-teeth, but longer.
It bears a fruit like a small cocoa-nut, the
size of a chesnut, inclosed in a hard shell, streaked with threads on
the outside, and containing a kernel of a hard horny substance, quite
tasteless; yet they are eaten roasted. The tree is called tobell, and
the fruit bell. For procuring the palmito wine, they cut off one of
the branches within a span of the head, to which they fasten a gourd
shell by the mouth, which in twenty-four hours is filled by a clear
whitish sap, of a good and strong relish, with which the natives get
drunk. The oysters formerly mentioned grow on trees resembling willows
in form, but having broader leaves, which are thick like leather, and
bearing small knobs like those of the cypress. From these trees hang
down many branches into the water, each about the thickness of a
walking-stick, smooth, limber, and pithy within, which are overflowed by
every tide, and hang as thick as they can stick of oysters, being the
only fruit of this tree.
They have many kinds of ordinary fishes, and some which seemed to us
extraordinary; as mullets, rays, thornbacks, old-wives with prominent
brows, fishes like pikes, gar-fish, cavallios like mackerel,
swordfishes, having snouts a yard long, toothed on each side like a saw,
sharks, dogfish, sharkers, resembling sharks, but having a broad flat
snout like a shovel, shoe-makers, having pendents at each side of their
mouths like barbels, and which grunt like hogs, with many others.
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