During our walks in the suburbs of Pará we had frequently opportunities of seeing the preparation of this favourite beverage. Two or three large bunches of fruit are brought in from the forest. The women of the house seize upon them, shake and strip them into a large earthen vessel, and pour on them warm water, not too hot to bear the hand in. The water soon becomes tinged with purple, and in about an hour the outer pulp has become soft enough to rub off. The water is now most of it poured away, a little cold added, and a damsel, with no sleeves to turn up, plunges both hands into the vessel, and rubs and kneads with great perseverance, adding fresh water as it is required, till the whole of the purple covering has been rubbed off and the greenish stones left bare. The liquid is now poured through a wicker sieve into another vessel, and is then ready for use. The smiling hostess will then fill a calabash, and give you another with farinha to mix to your taste; and nothing will delight her more than your emptying your rustic basin and asking her to refill it. The inhabitants of Pará are excessively attached to this beverage, and many never pass a day of their lives without it. They are particularly favoured too, in being able to get it at all seasons, for though in most places the trees only bear for a few months once in the year, yet in the neighbourhood of Pará there is so much variety of soil and aspect, that within a day or two’s journey, there is always some ripe Assaí to supply the market. Boys climb up the trees to get it, with a cord round the ankles (as shown on the Plate), and with its own leaves make a neatly interlaced basket to carry it home. From the great island of Marajó, its igaripés[1] and marshes, from the rivers Guamá and Mojú, from the thousand islands in the river, and from the vast palm swamps in the depths of the forest, baskets of the fruit are brought every morning to the city, where half the population look to the Assaí to supply a daily meal, and hundreds are said to make it, with farinha, almost their main subsistence. Footnote 1: A small stream, literally “path of the canoe.” The trees of this genus also furnish another article of food. The undeveloped leaves in the centre of the column form a white sweetish mass, which when boiled somewhat resembles artichoke or parsnep, and is a very good and wholesome vegetable. It may also be eaten raw, cut up and dressed as a salad with oil and vinegar. As, however, to obtain it the tree must be destroyed, it is not much used in Pará, except by travellers in the forest who have no particular interest in the preservation of the trees for fruit. The Cabbage Palm of the West Indies is an allied species, and is used for food in the same manner. Very fine specimens of this tree may be seen in the great Palm House at Kew, where they grow almost as luxuriantly as in their native forests.