THE TIMIT PALM. 171 



squire leading the way on his mule, with cutlass and 

 umbrella, both needful enough. 



We went along a sandy high road, bordered by a vege- 

 tation new to me. Low trees, with wiry branches and 

 shining ever-green leaves, which belonged, I was told, prin- 

 cipally to the myrtle tribe, were overtopped by Jagua palms, 

 and packed below with Pinguius ; with wild pine-apples, 

 wliose rose and purple flower-heads were very beautiful ; 

 and with a species of palm of which I had often heard, but 

 which I had never seen before, at least in anv abundance, 

 namely, the Timit,^ the leaves of which are used as thatch. 

 A low tree, seldom rising more than twenty or thirty 

 feet, it throws out wedge-shaped leaves some ten or twelve 

 leet long, sometimes all but entire, sometimes irregularly 

 pinnate, because the space between the straight and 

 parallel side nerves has not been filled up. These flat 

 wedge-shaped sheets, often six feet across, and the oblong 

 pinnse, some three feet long by six inches to a foot in 

 breadth, make admirable thatch; and on emergency, as we 

 often saw that day, good umbrellas. Bundles of them lay 

 along the road-side, tied up, ready for carrying away, and 

 each Negro or Xegress whom we passed carried a Timit 

 leaf, and hooked it on to his head when a gush of rain 

 came down. 



^ Manicaria. 



