I stood and looked up, watching the innumerable curled leaflets, pale green above and silver-gray below, shiver and rattle amid the denser foliage of the broad-leaved trees; and then went on to another and to another, to stare up again, and enjoy the mere shape of the most beautiful plant I had ever beheld, excepting always the Musa Ensete, from Abyssinia, in the Palm-house at Kew.

Truly spoke Humboldt, of this or a closely allied species, 'Nature has lavished every beauty of form on the Jagua Palm.' But here, as elsewhere to my great regret, I looked in vain for that famous and beautiful tree, the Piriajo, {247} or 'Peach Palm,' which is described in Mr.Bates's book, vol ii.p.218, under the name of Pupunha.

It grows here and there in the island, and always marks the site of an ancient Indian settlement.

This is probable enough, for 'it grows,' says Mr.Bates, 'wild nowhere on the Amazons.

It is one of those few vegetable productions (including three kinds of Manioc and the American species of Banana) which the Indians have cultivated from time immemorial, and brought with them in their original migration to Brazil.' From whence?
It has never yet been found wild; 'its native home may possibly,' Mr.Bates thinks, 'be in some still unexplored tract on the eastern slopes of the AEquatorial Andes.' Possibly so: and possibly, again, on tracts long sunk beneath the sea.