WILD PI1TE-APPLES. 433 



apple forms the ornament of the fields near the Havannah, 

 where it is planted in parallel rows; on the sides of the 

 Duida it embellishes the turf of the savannahs, lifting its 

 yellow fruit, crowned with a tuft of silvery leaves, above 

 the setaria, the paspalum, and a few cyperaceae. This plant, 

 which the Indians of the Orinoco call ana-curtta, has been 

 propagated since the sixteenth century in the interior of 

 China,* and some English travellers found it recently, toge- 

 ther with other plants indubitably American (maize, cassava, 

 tobacco, and pimento), on the banks of the River Congo, in 

 Africa. 



There is no missionary at Esmeralda ; the monk appointed 

 to celebrate mass in that hamlet is settled at Santa Barbara, 

 more than fifty leagues distant ; and he visits this spot but 

 five or six times in a year. "We were cordially received by 

 an old officer, who tock us for Catalonian shopkeepers, and 

 who supposed that trade had led to the missions. On seeing 

 packages of paper intended for drying our plants, he smiled 

 at our simple ignorance. " You come," said he, " to a country 

 where this kind of merchandise has no sale ; we write little 

 here ; and the dried leaves of maize, the platano (plantain- 

 tree), and the mjdho (heliconia), serve us, like paper in Eu- 

 rope, to wrap up needles, fish-hooks, and other little articles 

 of which we are careful." This old officer united in his 

 person the civil and ecclesiastical authority. He taught the 

 children, I will not say the Catechism, but the Rosary ; he 

 rang the bells to amuse himself ; and impelled by ardent zeal 

 for the service of the church, he sometimes used his chorister's 

 wand in a manner not very agreeable to the natives. 



Notwithstanding the small extent of the mission, three 

 Indian languages are spoken at Esmeralda ; the Idapi- 

 nianare, the Catarapenno, and the Maquiritan. The last of 

 these prevails on the Upper Orinoco, from the confluence of 



* No doubt remains of the American origin of the Bromelia ananas. 

 See Cayley's Life of Raleigh, vol. i, p. 61. Gili, vol. i, p. 210, 336. 

 Robert Brown, Geogr. Observ. on the Plants of the River Congo, 1818, 

 p. 50. 



f The Arivirianos of the banks of the Ventuari speak a dialect of the 

 language of the Maquiritares. The latter live, jointly with a tribe of the 

 Mac-os, in the savannahs that are by the Padt.mo. They are so numerous, 

 that they have even given their name to this tributary stream of thf 

 Orinoco. 



TOL. II. 2 F 



