60 MR. R. 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 simplicifolivmi 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 Flacourtiaceai. 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 Cunucunuma, Ventuari, and Sipapo, it is appa- 

 rently much scarcer. 



Of the Piassaba collected on the Casiquiare and Guainia, about 

 half is taken down to Para, 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 Eoyalist army, who, when the Eepublican 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 



