THJS P1EIJAO PALM-TEEE.. 3-49 



myself to pointing out what is imperfect, or fatal to huma- 

 nity, in their civil or religious institutions. If I ha.e dwelt 

 longer on the Rock of the Gudhiba, it was to record an 

 affecting instance of maternal tenderness in a race of people 

 so long calumniated ; and because I thought some benefit 

 might accrue from publishing a fact, which 1 had from the 

 monks of San Francisco, and which proves how much the 

 system of the missions calls for the care of the legislator. 



Above the mouth of the Guasucavi we entered the Rio 

 Temi, the course of which is from south to north. Had 

 we continued to ascend the Atabapo, we should have turned 

 to east-south-east, going farther from the banks of the 

 Q-uainia or Kio Negro. The Temi is only eighty or ninety 

 toises broad, but in any other country than Guiana it would 

 be a considerable river. The country exhibits the uniform 

 aspect of forests covering ground perfectly flat. The fine 

 pirijao palm, with its fruit like peaches, and a new species 

 of bache, or mauritia, its trunk bristled with thorns, rise 

 amid smaller trees, the vegetation of which appears to be 

 retarded by the continuance of the inundations. The 

 Mauritia aculeata is called by the Indians jwria or cauvaja ; 

 its leaves are in the form of a fan, and they bend towards 

 the ground. At the centre of every leaf, no doubt from 

 the effect of some disease of the parenchyma, concentric 

 circles of alternate blue and yellow appear, the yellow pre- 

 vailing towards the middle. We were singularly struck by 

 this appearance; the leaves, coloured like the peacock's 

 tail, are supported by short and very thick trunks. The 

 thorns are not slender and long like those of the corozo 

 and other thorny palm-trees; but on the contrary, very 

 woody, short, ana broad at the base, like the thorns of the 

 Hura crepitans. On the banks of the Atabapo and the 

 Temi, this palm-tree is distributed in groups ol twelve or 

 fifteen stems, close together, and looking as if they rose 

 from the same root. These trees resemble in their appear- 

 ance, form, and scarcity of leaves, the fan-palms and pal- 

 mettos of the Old World. We remarked that some plants 

 of the juria were entirely destitute of fruit, and others 

 exhibited a considerable quantity ; this circumstance seems 

 to indicate a palm-tree of separate sexes. 



Wherever the llio Temi forms coves, the forest is inun- 



