DEEAD OF WABP-S1WO8. 3(57 



that fine timber for building, which, on the north-west coast 

 of America, on mountains where the thermometer falls in 

 winter to 20 cent, below zero, we find in the family of the 

 conifer. Such, in every zone, and in all the families of 

 American plants, is the prodigious force of vegetation, that, 

 in the latitude of fifty-seven degrees north, on the same 

 isothermal line with St. Petersburgh and the Orknevs, the 

 Pinus canadensis displays trunks one hundred and fifty feet 

 high, and six feet in diameter.* Towards night we arrived 

 at a small farm, in the puerto or landing place of Pimichin. 

 We were shown a cross near the road, which marked the 

 spot " where a poor capuchin missionary had been killed by 

 wasps." I state this on the authority of the monks of Ja- 

 vita and the Indians. They talk much in these countries of 

 wasps and venomous ants, but we saw neither one nor the 

 other of these insects. It is well known that in the torrid 

 zone slight stings often cause fits of fever almost as violent 

 as those that with us accompany severe organic injuries. The 

 death of this poor monk was probably the effect of fatigue 

 and damp, rather than of the venom contained in the stings 

 of wasps, which the Indians dread extremely. We must not 

 confound the wasps of Javita with the melipones bees, called 

 by the Spaniards .angelitos (little angels) which covered our 

 faces and hands on the summit of the Silla de Caracas. 



The landing place of Pimichin is surrounded by a small 

 plantation of caaco-trees ; they are very vigorous, and here, 

 as on the banks of the Atabapo and the Guainia, they are 

 loaded with flowers and fruits at all seasons. They begin 

 to bear from the fourth year ; on the coast of Caracas they 

 do not bear till the sixth or eighth year. The soil of these 

 countries is sandy, wherever it is not marshy ; but the light 

 lands of the Tuamini and Pimichin are extremely produc- 

 tivef. Around the conucos of Pimichin grows, in its wild 



* Langsdorf informs us that the inhabitants of Norfolk Sound make 

 boats of a single trunk, fifty feet long, four feet and a half broad, and 

 three high at the Bides. They contain thirty persons. These boats remind 

 us of the canoes of the Rio Chagres in the isthmus of Panama, in the 

 torrid zone. The Populua balsamifera also attains an immense height, on 

 the mountains that border Norfolk Sound. 



t At Javita, an extent of fifty feet square, planted with Jatrophi 

 manihot (yucca) yields in two years, in the worst soil, a harvest of six 

 tor las of cassava : the same extent on a middling soil yields in fourteen 



