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Updated: June 29, 2025
Do the nuts fall to the ground and allow the monkeys to gather them? No. This is not the case. How then? We shall see! Guapo and Leon had returned to the camp, taking with them the pupunha fruit and the firewood. A fire was kindled, the cooking-pot hung over it on a tripod, and they all sat around to wait for its boiling.
This new palm was the "pupunha," or "peach-palm," as it is called, from the resemblance which its fruits bear to peaches. It is also named "pirijao" in other parts of South America, and it belongs to the genus "Gullielma." At the tops of these trees, under the great globe of leaves, Guapo and Leon perceived the nuts.
We slept one night at the house of a native family living in the thick of the forest where a festival was going on and, there being no room to hang our hammocks under shelter. on account of the number of visitors, we lay down on a mat in the open air, near a shed which stood in the midst of a grove of fruit-trees and pupunha palms.
It is with the needle-like spines of this species that many tribes of Indians puncture their skins in tattooing themselves, and other uses are made by them of different parts of this noble tree. The macaws, parrots, and other fruit-eating birds, are fonder of the nuts of the pupunha than perhaps any other species; and so, too, would be the fruit-eating quadrupeds if they could get at them.
Do the nuts fall to the ground and allow the monkeys to gather them? No. This is not the case. How then? We shall see! Guapo and Leon had returned to the camp, taking with them the pupunha fruit and the firewood. A fire was kindled, the cooking-pot hung over it on a tripod, and they all sat around to wait for its boiling.
The process of cooking came next, and this Guapo made more tedious than it might have been, as he was resolved to dress the marimonda after the manner practised by the Indians, and which by them is esteemed the best. He first built a little stage out of split laths of the pupunha palm. For this a hard wood that will resist fire a long time is necessary, and the pupunha was just the thing.
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 Para, which two sections of the country we have already seen also differ considerably.
Another ran down the body of this one, and taking a turn of his tail round his neck and fore-arm, skipped off and also hung head downwards. A third joined himself on to the second in a similar manner, and then a fourth. The fore-arms of the fourth rested upon the fruit-cluster of the pupunha! The chain was now long enough for the purpose.
Wherever a native village exists, there are seen growing in clusters, beautiful ornaments beside the palm-thatched huts, the tall and elegant pupunha, or peach palm Guilielma speciosa to the height of sixty feet, and often perfectly straight. A single bunch of the fruit weighs as much as a man can carry, and on each tree several are borne.
There were many mouths to feed, and they wanted more nuts. Without changing their position, they, by means of their arms and legs, threw themselves into a vibrating motion, and by this means the last on the string soon seized upon another pupunha, and also detached its fruit.
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