Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/53

 and bearing little clusters of round fruit not larger than a good bunch of currants. A few of the forest trees had the size and strongly-branched figures of our oaks, and a similar bark. One noble palm grew here in great abundance, and gave a distinctive character to the district. This was the Œnocarpus distichus, one of the kinds called Bacába by the natives. It grows to a height of forty to fifty feet. The crown is of a lustrous dark-green colour, and of a singularly flattened or compressed shape; the leaves being arranged on each side in nearly the same plane. When I first saw this tree on the campos, where the east wind blows with great force night and day for several months, I thought the shape of the crown was due to the leaves being prevented from radiating equally by the constant action of the breezes. But the plane of growth is not always in the direction of the wind, and the crown has the same shape when the tree grows in the sheltered woods. The fruit of this fine palm ripens towards the end of the year, and is much esteemed by the natives, who manufacture a pleasant drink from it similar to the assai described in a former chapter, by rubbing off the coat of pulp from the nuts, and mixing it with water. A bunch of fruit weighs thirty or forty pounds. The beverage has a milky appearance, and an agreeable nutty flavour. The tree is very difficult to climb, on account of the smoothness of its stem; consequently the natives, whenever they want a bunch of fruit for a bowl of Bacába, cut down and thus destroy a tree which has taken a score or two of years to grow, in order to get at it.