I had remarked, from the camp, palms unlike any I had seen before, starring the opposite forest with pale gray-green leaves.  Long and earnestly I had scanned them through the glasses.  Now was the time to see them close, and from beneath.  I soon guessed (and rightly) that I was looking at that Palma de Jagua, {246} which excited—­and no wonder—­the enthusiasm of the usually unimpassioned Humboldt.  Magnificent as the tree is when its radiating leaves are viewed from above, it is even more magnificent when you stand beneath it.  The stem, like that of the Coconut, usually curves the height of a man ere it rises in a shaft for fifty or sixty feet more.  From the summit of that shaft springs a crown—­I had rather say, a fountain—­ of pinnated leaves; only eight or ten of them; but five-and-twenty feet long each.  For three-fourths of their length they rise at an angle of 45 degrees or more; for the last fourth they fall over, till the point hangs straight down; and each leaflet, which is about two feet and a half long, falls over in a similar curve, completing the likeness of the whole to a fountain of water, or a gush of rockets.  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.  He describes the tree as ’a noble ornament, from fifty to sixty feet in height, and often as straight as a scaffold-pole.  The taste of the fruit may be compared to a mixture of chestnuts and cheese.  Vultures devour it greedily, and come in quarrelsome flocks to the trees when it is ripe.  Dogs will also eat it.  I do not recollect seeing cats do the same, though they will go into the woods to eat Tucuma, another kind of palm fruit.’