92 FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. 



raedlers and quavas, pappaws and apple trees, mar- 

 malade and plum trees, are also within reach. The 

 soil, too, when cleared of timber, yields an abun- 

 dant increase ; the manioc and cassada, potato and 

 igname, the cariaco, a sweet and profitable grain; 

 and the tages, a productive root, the principal food 

 of such domestic animals as man collects around 

 him, wherever he has fixed his abode. Coffee, 

 plantains and pepper thrive, and amply repay 

 the labour of cultivation, with such trees and 

 shrubs as bear dates and figs, grapes, and spices, 

 nutmegs, cloves, and cinnamon: dyeing wood, of 

 various descriptions, with cochineal, wild honey, 

 and gum copal, might also be met with in the 

 forests; while the most sunny places yield physic- 

 nuts, and palma christis, quassia roots, and ipeca- 

 cuanha. Thus easily might an enterprising man 

 collect around him, those comforts and even luxuries, 

 which the Europeans often purchase at a costly price. 

 This also, is a land fertile in parasitic plants. The 

 bois jourrni, with its crooked and ramifying branches, 

 covered with tubercles, which afford shelter to in- 

 numerable ants ; the favourite resort, too, of wild 

 pigeons, whose deep melancholy cooings are heard 

 at intervals in the silence of the forests; the bois 

 viviere, and rose mahout, with others of rapid 

 growth and w r ild tracery of leaves and branches, 

 are often covered with a luxuriant vegetation of 

 creepers or parasitic plants. Among these we may 

 briefly notice, as one of the most elegant, that 

 beautiful creeper, the Coryanthes maculata, which 

 hangs forth its fairy buckets, as if for the refresh- 

 ment of such thirsty birds and insects as must 



