At another island the crew received from the inhabitants the first present of cocoanuts made to a European of which any record exists. Pigafetta describes this now world-famous fruit in a manner which shows that he considered it a most wonderful novelty. We extract a portion of his description:--"Cocoanuts," he says, "are the fruit of a species of palm-tree, which furnishes the people with bread, wine, oil, vinegar, and physic. To obtain wine, they make an incision in the top of the tree, penetrating to the pith, from which drops a liquor resembling white must, but which is rather tart. This liquor is caught in the hollow of a reed the thickness of a man's leg, which is suspended to the tree and is carefully emptied twice a day. The fruit is of the size of a man's head, and sometimes larger. Its outward rind is green and two fingers thick: it is composed of filaments of which they make cordage for their boats. Beneath this is a shell harder and thicker than that of the walnut. This they burn and pulverize, using the powder as a remedy in several distempers. Within, the shell is lined with a white kernel about as thick as a finger, which is eaten, instead of bread, with meat and fish. In the centre of the nut, encircled by the kernel, a sweet and limpid liquor is found, of a corroborative nature. This liquor, poured into a glass and suffered to stand, assumes the consistence of an apple. The kernel and liquor, if left to ferment and afterwards boiled, yield an oil as thick as butter. To obtain vinegar, the liquor itself is exposed to the sun, and the acid which results from it resembles that vinegar we make from white wine. A family of ten persons might be supported from two cocoanut-trees, by alternately tapping each every week, and letting the other rest, that a perpetual drainage of liquor may not kill the tree. We were told that a cocoanut-tree lives a century."