60 MR. В. SPRUCE ON LEOPOLDINIA PIASSABA. 
on the right bank, on a barranca beyond the reach of floods. This 
was a noble specimen— perhaps over 40 feet high. My friend 
Wallace had been wrongly informed of the partiality of the Pias- 
saba for black waters, as it grows more abundantly than anywhere 
else in the forests of the Casiquiare, and especially from the mouth 
of Lake Vasiva upwards, where the waters of the river are much 
whiter than below; but, as I have nowhere seen it on ground 
inundated by the rivers, it is plain that the colour of their waters 
cannot influence its existence. Near two Indian villages on this 
part of the Casiquiare, where I penetrated deep into the forest, I 
came on large groves of Piassaba. Nothing that I have seen in 
Amazonian forests dwells more strongly and pleasantly on my 
memory than my walk among these strange bearded columns, 
from whose apex sprang the green interlacing arches which 
shaded me overhead. The ground was dry—herbaceous vegeta- 
tion there was none—and almost the only companions of the palm 
were scattered low trees of Heterostemon simplicifoliwn Spruce, 
with its large blue butterfly-like flowers, and another sort of tree 
of equally humble growth, clad with numerous flesh-coloured 
flowers, which Mr. Bentham is disposed to consider a new genus 
of Flacourtiacee. To have escaped from the cloud of mosquitos 
on the bank of the river no doubt enhanced the enjoyment. This 
was on the south side of the Casiquiare, but the Piassaba is equally 
abundant north of that river, and throughout the broad plain 
included by the Casiquiare, Orinoco, and Guainia. North of the 
Orinoco, on the Cunucundma, Ventuari, and Sipápo, it is appa- 
rently much scarcer. 
Of the Piassaba collected on the Casiquiare and Guainia, about 
half is taken down to Pará, and the other half to Angostura, on 
the Orinoco. In the summer season the Indian villages on those 
rivers present a very lively appearance, from the boat-building 
and rope-making which occupy their inhabitants. An interesting 
circumstance respecting the latter branch of industry came to my 
knowledge at San Carlos del Rio Negro, where, constantly hearing 
an old Indian woman spoken of as ‘ La Inglesa,’ I sought her out, 
and found that she had been the lawful wife of an Englishman— 
a soldier in the Royalist army, who, when the Republican party 
triumphed, retired towards the frontier of Brazil, and squatted 
down at San Carlos. I was assured by his widow, and by others of 
the inhabitants, that this man, whom they knew only by the name 
of * Don Juan,’ first taught the people to make Piassaba-rope by 
the aid of a wheel, and in fact established the first rope-walk in 
