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For months they had had no food except what little game they shot, and especially the wild fruits and nuts; if it had not been for the great abundance of the Brazil-nuts they would all have died. At the first big stream they encountered they built a canoe, and Alencarliense took command of it and descended to map the course of the river.
A cargo of almonds of the juvia, bought into Havre, captured by a privateer, in 1807, was employed for the same purpose. The tree that yields the Brazil-nuts is generally not more than two or three feet in diameter, but attains one hundred or one hundred and twenty feet in height.
It is the great woody and spherical pericarps that contain the nuts or fruits that are wonderful. These are often as large as the head of a child, and as hard as the shell of the cocoa-nut! Inside is found a large number twenty or more of those triangular-shaped nuts which you may buy at any Italian warehouse under the name of "Brazil-nuts."
The extraordinary abundance of the crop may be measured by the fact, that one port alone on the Amazon River, exports annually more than fifty millions of these excellent nuts. "Brazil-nuts are largely eaten as a nutritious and palatable food, by a multitude of people in many lands.
We found in the village a few juvia-trees which furnish the triangular nuts called in Europe the almonds of the Amazon, or Brazil-nuts. We have made it known by the name of Bertholletia excelsa. The trees attain after eight years' growth the height of thirty feet.
The men found several honey-trees, and fruits of various kinds, and small cocoanuts; they chopped down an ample number of palms, for the palm-cabbage; and, most important of all, they gathered a quantity of big Brazil-nuts, which when roasted tasted like the best of chestnuts and are nutritious; and they caught a number of big piranhas, which were good eating.
Here they ran across a poor devil who had for four months been lost in the forest and was dying of slow starvation. He had eaten nothing but Brazil-nuts and the grubs of insects. He could no longer walk, but could sit erect and totter feebly for a few feet. Another canoe was built, and in it Pyrineus started down-stream with the eleven fever patients and the starving wanderer.
It is the great woody and spherical pericarps that contain the nuts or fruits that are wonderful. These are often as large as the head of a child, and as hard as the shell of the cocoa-nut! Inside is found a large number twenty or more of those triangular-shaped nuts which you may buy at any Italian warehouse under the name of "Brazil-nuts."
The Sapucaya is not less abundant, probably, than the Bertholletia, but its nuts in falling are scattered about and eaten by wild animals; whilst the full, whole capsules of Brazil-nuts are collected by the natives. What attracted us chiefly were the colossal trees.
Each fruit contains within its black, woody, shell, from eighteen to twenty-five closely packed seeds or brazil-nuts. These fruits, as they ripen, fall from their lofty position. At the proper season they are collected, broken open and marketed by the Indians, who roam through these dark, gloomy, miasmatic forests.
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