Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/233

 do not recollect seeing cats do the same, although they go voluntarily to the woods to eat Tucumá, another kind of palm fruit. The tree, as it grows in clusters beside the palm-thatched huts, is a noble ornament, being, when full grown, from fifty to sixty feet in height and often as straight as a scaffold-pole. A bunch of fruit when ripe is a load for a strong man, and each tree bears several of them. The Pupunha grows wild nowhere on the Amazons. It is one of those few vegetable productions (including three kinds of mandioca and the American species of Banana) which the Indians have cultivated from time immemorial, and brought with them in their original migration to Brazil. It is only, however, the more advanced tribes who have kept up the cultivation. The superiority of the fruit on the Solimoens to that grown on the Lower Amazons and in the neighbourhood of Pará is very striking. At Ega it is generally as large as a full-sized peach, and when boiled almost as mealy as a potatoe; whilst at Pará it is no bigger than a walnut, and the pulp is fibrous. Bunches of sterile or seedless fruits sometimes occur in both districts. 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 makes a good nourishing meal for a grown-up person. It is the general belief that there is more nutriment in Pupunha than in fish or Vacca marina.

The seasons in the Upper Amazons region offer some points of difference from those of the lower river and the district of Pará, which two sections of the country