PEPFER-GROVES. 101 



Some^ have round leaves, peltate, that is, with the footstalk 

 springing from inside the circumference, like a one-sided 

 umbrella. They catch the eye at once, from the gi-eat size 

 of their leaves, each a full foot across ; but they are hardly 

 as odd and foreisjn-lookin^ as the more abundant forms of 

 peppers,- usually so soft and green that they look as if you 

 might make them into salad, stalks and all, yet with a quaint 

 stiffness and primness, given by the regular jointing of their 

 knotted stalks, and the regular tiling of their pointed, droop- 

 ing, strong-nerved leaves, which are usually, to add to the 

 odd look of the plant, all crooked, one side of the base (and 

 that in each species always the same side) being much larger 

 than the other, so that the w^hole head of the bush seems to 

 have got a twist from right to left, or left to right. Xothing 

 can look more unlike than they to the climbing true peppers, 

 or even to the creej)ing pepper-weeds, which abound in all 

 waste land. But their rat-tails of small green flowers prove 

 them to be peppers nevertheless. 



On we went, upward ever, past Cacao and Bois immortelle 

 orchards, and comfortable settlers' hamlets ; and now and 

 then tlirough a strip of virgin forest, in which we began to 

 see, for the first time, though not for the last, that " re- 

 splendent Calycophyllum " as Dr. Krueger calls it, Chaconia, 

 as it is commonly called here, after poor Alonzo de Chacon, 



^ Potlioniorplie. - Euckea and Artautlic 



