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Antiqua
Antiqua; Spaltensatz; Auszeichnung: Kursivierung; Schmuck: Kapitälchen.
We had heard several weeks before of a tree, the sap
of which is a nourishing milk. It is called “the cow
tree,” and we were assured that the negroes of the farm,
who drink plentifully of this vegetable milk, consider
it a wholesome aliment. All the milky juices of plants
being acrid, bitter, and more or less poisonous, this
account appeared to us very extraordinary; but we
found by experience, during our stay at Barbula, that
the virtues of this tree had not been exaggerated.
This fine tree rises like the broad leaved star-apple.
Its oblong and pointed leaves, rough and alternate, are
marked by lateral ribs, prominent at the lower surface
and parallel. Some of them are ten inches long. We
did not see the flower: the fruit is somewhat fleshy,
and contains one and sometimes two nuts. When in-
cisions are made in the trunk of this tree, it yields
abundance of a glutinous milk, tolerably thick, devoid
of all acridity, and of an agreeable and balmy smell.
It was offered to
drank considerable quantities of it in the evening
before we went to bed, and very early in the morning,
without feeling the least injurious effect. The viscosity
of this milk alone renders it a little disagreeable.
The negroes and the free people who work in the
plantations drink it, dipping into it their bread of
maize or cassava. The overseer of the farm told us
that the negroes grow sensibly fatter during the season
when the palo de vaca furnishes them with most milk.
This juice, exposed to the air, presents at its surface
(perhaps in consequence of the absorption of the
atmospheric oxygen) membranes of a strongly animal-
ized substance, yellow, somewhat resembling cheese.
These membranes, separated from the rest of the more
aqueous liquid, are elastic, almost like caoutchouc;
but they undergo, in time, the same phenomena of
putrefaction as gelatine. The people call the coagulum,
that separates by the contact of the air, cheese. The
coagulum grows sour in the space of five or six
days.
Amidst the great number of curious phenomena
which I have observed in the course of my travels, I
confess there are few that have made so powerful
an impression on me as the aspect of this tree. What-
ever relates to milk or to corn inspires an interest
which is not merely that of the physical knowledge of
things, but is connected with another order of ideas
and sentiments. We can scarcely conceive how the
human race could exist without farinaceous substances,
and without that nourishing juices which is appro-
priated to the long feebleness of the infant. The
amylaceous matter of corn, the object of religious
veneration among so many nations, ancient and mo-
dern, is diffused in the seeds, and deposited in the
roots of vegetables; milk, which serves as an aliment,
appears to us exclusively the produce of animal orga-
nization.
Such are the impressions we have received in our
earliest infancy: such is also the source of that asto-
nishment created by the aspect of the tree just de-
scribed. It is not here the solemn shades of forests,
the majestic course of rivers, the mountains wrapped
in eternal snow, that excite our emotion. A few drops
of vegetable juice recall to our minds all the powerful-
ness and the fecundity of nature. On the barren flank
of a rock grows a tree with coriaceous and dry leaves.
Its large woody roots can scarcely penetrate into the
stone.
For several months of the year not a single shower
moistens its foliage. Its branches appear dead and
dried; but when the trunk is pierced there flows from
it a sweet and nourishing milk. It is at the rising of
the sun that this vegetable fountain is most abundant;
the negroes and natives are then seen hastening from
all quarters, furnished with large bowls to receive the
Some empty their bowls under the tree itself, others
carry the juice home to their children.—