338 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 102 



mountains and some rivers to cross ; it is shorter and easier to travel 

 down the Rio Cauca and then up the Rio de Nichi. In Caceres they 

 get two crops of corn a year, rice, many sorts of beans, cassava, 

 sweet potatoes, and yams, which are another variety of them ; there 

 are both wild and cultivated or garden sorts ; rascaderas, two kinds 

 of arracachas, and aoyamas, which are like Guinea gourds. 



1015. They have many different sorts of flowers, like pinks and 

 carnations ; garden truck and vegetables ; many kinds of fruit, bananas, 

 aguacates of three varieties, in season the whole year round ; pine- 

 apples, oranges, limes, lemons, citrons large and small, sugarcane, 

 with establishments for making syrup and sugar. They have papaws, 

 chontaduros, jocotes, guanabanas (bullock's heart), besides which 

 there are many others excellent to eat, called caguyes. These grow 

 on very tall trees in pods and when they are ripe, they drop when the 

 wind blows. They have a hard thorny skin or rind, and inside, an 

 almond big as three of ours, as mellow as ours and sweeter and oilier. 

 The season for this fruit is 2 months, from March through April. 



1016. There is another they call cerezas (cherries), though they 

 neither look nor taste like them. They taste better, and are smaller ; 

 they grow a number on the same stalk ; the trees are very tall. This 

 fruit is highly prized, both because of its excellence and of the 

 extraordinary fact that it only bears every 3 or 4 years, and then 

 in abundance ; the season is only March and April. There is another 

 they call buiiuelos (crullers) because of the similarity; the flavor is 

 bittersweet, and pungent. Huevas (roe) grow on very pliant trees 

 with broad leaves ; they put out large pods and in each pod there are 

 three or four huevas covered with a dark gray hull, each of the shape 

 of a medium-sized pear ; they are eaten boiled or roasted, and have 

 a chestnut flavor. 



1017. There is another fruit they call caimitos, of the size of an 

 orange and purple outside when they are ripe ; inside they are white, 

 sweet, and well-flavored. There are others which are small, hardly 

 larger than apricots, yellow, and well-flavored. 



1018. The animals found in this country are: Very large and 

 fierce tigers ; small lions ; tapirs the build of a mule ; large bears ; 

 in the woods, very handsome and remarkable spotted wildcats, and 

 others of the ordinary kind ; many sorts of monkeys, some with 

 long tails; squirrels; cuchumbies ; armadillos; foxes; chuchas (opos- 

 sums) which carry their young in a pouch and suckle them; they 

 are great chicken thieves, and generally commit their depredations 

 on stormy, rainy nights. There are three sorts of wild hogs ; the 

 best are the cariblancos, which are very wild ; to kill them, they climb 



