Chapter V: Plants Cultivated for Their Seeds (5)

The cocoa-nut abounds on the littoral of the warm regions of Asia, of the islands to the south of this continent, and in analogous regions of Africa and America; but it may be asserted that it dates in Brazil, the West Indies, and the west coast of Africa from an introduction which took place about three centuries ago. Piso and Marcgraf[2154] seem to admit that the species is foreign to Brazil without saying so positively. De Martius,[2155] who has published a very important work on the Palmaceæ, and has travelled through the provinces of Bahia, Pernambuco, and others, where the cocoa-nut abounds, does not say that it is wild. It was introduced into Guiana by missionaries.[2156] Sloane[2157] says it is an exotic in the West Indies. An old author of the sixteenth century, Martyr, whom he quotes, speaks of its introduction. This probably took place a few years after the discovery of America, for Joseph Acosta[2158] saw the cocoa-nut palm at Porto Rico in the sixteenth century. De Martius says that the Portuguese introduced it on the coast of Guinea. Many travellers do not even mention it in this region, where it is apparently of no great importance. More common in Madagascar and on the east coast, it is not, however, named in several works on the plants of Zanzibar, the Seychelles, Mauritius, etc., perhaps because it is considered as cultivated in these parts.

Evidently the species is not of African origin, nor of the eastern part of tropical America. Eliminating these countries, there remain western tropical America, the islands of the Pacific, the Indian Archipelago, and the south of Asia, where the tree abounds with every appearance of being more or less wild and long established.

The navigators Dampier and Vancouver[2159] found it at the beginning of the seventeenth century, forming woods in the islands near Panama, not on the mainland, and in the isle of Cocos, situated at three hundred miles from the continent in the Pacific. At that time these islands were uninhabited. Later the cocoa-nut palm was found on the western coast from Mexico to Peru, but usually authors do not say that it was wild, excepting Seemann,[2160] however, who saw this palm both wild and cultivated on the Isthmus of Panama. According to Hernandez,[2161] in the sixteenth century the Mexicans called it _coyolli_, a word which does not seem to be native.

Oviedo,[2162] writing in 1526, in the first years of the conquest of Mexico, says that the cocoa-nut palm was abundant on the coast of the Pacific in the province of the Cacique Chiman, and he clearly describes the species. This does not prove the tree to be wild. In southern Asia, especially in the islands, the cocoa-nut is both wild and cultivated. The smaller the islands, and the lower and the more subject to the influence of the sea air, the more the cocoa-nut predominates and attracts the attention of travellers. Some take their name from the tree, among others two islands close to the Andamans and one near Sumatra.

The cocoa-nut occurring with every appearance of an ancient wild condition at once in Asia and western America, the question of origin is obscure. Excellent authors have solved it differently. De Martius believes it to have been transported by currents from the islands situated to the west of Central America, into those of the Asiatic Archipelago. I formerly inclined to the same hypothesis,[2163] since admitted without question by Grisebach;[2164] but the botanists of the seventeenth century often regarded the species as Asiatic, and Seemann,[2165] after a careful examination, says he cannot come to a decision. I will give the reasons for and against each hypothesis.

In favour of an American origin, it may be said—

1. The eleven other species of the genus Cocos are American, and all those which de Martius knew well are Brazilian.[2166] Drude,[2167] who has studied the Palmaceæ, has written a paper to show that each genus of this family is proper to the ancient or to the new world, excepting the genus Elæis, and even here he suspects a transport of the _E. guineensis_ from America into Africa, which is not at all probable. (See above, p. 429.) The force of this argument is somewhat diminished by the circumstance that _Cocos nucifera_ is a tree which grows on the littoral and in damp places, while the other species live under different conditions, frequently far from the sea and from rivers. Maritime plants, and those which grow in marshes or damp places, have commonly a more vast habitation than others of the same genus.

2. The trade winds of the Pacific, to the south and yet more to the north of the equator, drive floating bodies from America to Asia, a direction contrary to that of the general currents.[2168] It is known, moreover, from the unexpected arrival of bottles containing papers on different coasts, that chance has much to do with these transports.

The arguments in favour of an Asiatic, or contrary to an American origin, are the following:—

1. A current between the third and fifth parallels, north latitude, flows from the islands of the Indian Archipelago to Panama.[2169] To the north and south of this are currents which take the opposite direction, but they start from regions too cold for the cocoa-nut, and do not touch Central America, where it is supposed to have been long indigenous.

2. The inhabitants of the islands of Asia were far bolder navigators than the American Indians. It is very possible that canoes from the Asiatic Islands, containing a provision of cocoa-nuts, were thrown by tempests or false manœuvres on to the islands or the west coast of America. The converse is highly improbable.

3. The area for three centuries has been much vaster in Asia than in America, and the difference was yet more considerable before that epoch, for we know that the cocoa-nut has not long existed in the east of tropical America.

4. The inhabitants of the islands of Asia possess an immense number of varieties of this tree, which points to a very ancient cultivation. Blume, in his _Rumphia_, enumerates eighteen varieties in Java and the adjacent islands, and thirty-nine in the Philippines. Nothing similar has been observed in America.

5. The uses of the cocoa-nut are more varied and more habitual in Asia. The natives of America hardly utilize it except for the contents of the nut, from which they do not extract the oil.

6. The common names, very numerous and original in Asia, as we shall presently see, are rare, and often of European origin in America.

7. It is not probable that the ancient Mexicans and inhabitants of Central America would have neglected to spread the cocoa-nut in several directions, had it existed among them from a very remote epoch. The trifling breadth of the Isthmus of Panama would have facilitated the transport from one coast to the other, and the species would soon have been established in the West Indies, at Guiana, etc., as it has become naturalized in Jamaica, Antigua,[2170] and elsewhere, since the discovery of America.

8. If the cocoa-nut in America dated from a geological epoch more ancient than the pleiocene or even eocene deposits in Europe, it would probably have been found on both coasts, and the islands to the east and west equally.

9. We cannot find any ancient date of the existence of the cocoa-nut in America, but its presence in Asia three or four thousand years ago is proved by several Sanskrit names. Piddington in his index only quotes one, _narikela_. It is the most certain, since it recurs in modern Indian languages. Scholars count ten of these, which, according to their meaning, seem to apply to the species or its fruit.[2171] _Narikela_ has passed with modifications into Arabic and Persian.[2172] It is even found at Otahiti in the form _ari_ or _haari_,[2173] together with a Malay name.

10. The Malays have a name widely diffused in the archipelago—_kalâpa_. _klâpa_, _klôpo_. At Sumatra and Nicobar we find the name _njîor_, _nicor_; in the Philippines, _niog_; at Bali, _niuh_, _njo_; at Tahiti, _niuh_; and in other islands, _nu_, _nidju_, _ni_; even at Madagascar, _wua-niu_.[2174] The Chinese have _ye_, or _ye-tsu_ (the tree is _ye_). With the principal Sanskrit name this constitutes four different roots, which show an ancient existence in Asia. However, the uniformity of nomenclature in the archipelago as far as Tahiti and Madagascar indicates a transport by human agency since the existence of known languages.

The Chinese name means head of the king of Yuë, referring to an absurd legend of which Dr. Bretschneider speaks.[2175] This savant tells us that the first mention of the cocoa-nut occurs in a poem of the second century before Christ, but the most unmistakable descriptions are in works later than the ninth century of our era. It is true that the ancient writers scarcely knew the south of China, the only part of the empire where the cocoa-nut palm can live.

In spite of the Sanskrit names, the existence of the cocoa-nut in Ceylon, where it is well established on the coast, dates from an almost historical epoch. Near Point de Galle, Seemann tells us may be seen carved upon a rock the figure of a native prince, Kotah Raya, to whom is attributed the discovery of the uses of the cocoa-nut, unknown before him; and the earliest chronicle of Ceylon, the _Marawansa_, does not mention this tree, although it carefully reports the fruits imported by different princes. It is also noteworthy that the ancient Greeks and Egyptians only knew the cocoa-nut at a late epoch as an Indian curiosity. Apollonius of Tyana saw this palm in Hindustan, at the beginning of the Christian era.[2176]

From these facts the most ancient habitation in Asia would be in the archipelago, rather than on the continent or in Ceylon; and in America in the islands west of Panama. What are we to think of this varied and contradictory evidence? I formerly thought that the arguments in favour of Western America were the strongest. Now, with more information and greater experience in similar questions, I incline to the idea of an origin in the Indian Archipelago. The extension towards China, Ceylon, and India dates from not more than three thousand or four thousand years ago, but the transport by sea to the coasts of America and Africa took place perhaps in a more remote epoch, although posterior to those epochs when the geographical and physical conditions were different to those of our day.