18 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



The Llanos are never more beautiful than at the end of the 

 rainy season, before the sun has absorbed the moisture of the 

 soil. Then every plant is robed with the freshest green ; an 

 agreeable breeze, cooled by the evaporating waters, undulates 

 over the sea of grasses, and at night a host of stars sliines 

 mildly upon the fragrant savannah, or the silvery moonbeam 

 trembles on its surface. Where on the margin of the primitive 

 forest, girt with colossal cactuses and agaves, groups of the 

 mauritia rise majestically over the plain, the stateliest park 

 ever planted by man must yield in beauty to the charming 

 picture of these natural gardens, bordered here by impenetrable 

 thickets, and there by the blue mountain- chain, behind whicli 

 the fancy paints scenes of still more enchanting loveliness. 



The mauritia, the chief ornament of the park-like savannah, 

 and no less useful than the date-tree of the African oasis, pro- 

 vides the Indian with almost every necessary, and fully deserves 

 tlie name of ' tree of life,' bestowed upon it by the poetical 

 fancy of the Jesuit Gumilla. Eising to the height of a hun- 

 dred feet, its slender trunk is surmounted by a magnificent 

 tuft of large, fan-shaped fronds, of a brilliant green, under 

 whose canopy the scaly fruits, resembling pine cones, hang in 

 large clusters. Like the banana, they afford a food differing 

 in taste according to the stages of ripeness in which they are 

 plucked ; and before the blossoms of the male palm have 

 expanded,, its trunk contains a nutritious pith like sago, which, 

 dried in thin slices, forms one of the cliief articles of the 

 Indian's bill of fare. Like his brethren of the Eastern world, 

 he also knows how to prepare an intoxicating ' toddy ' from 

 the juice of the flower-spathes ; the leaves serve to cover his 

 hut ; out of the fibres of their petioles he manufactures twine 

 and cordage ; and the sheaths at tlieir base afford him material 

 for his sandals. 



At the mouth of the Orinoco the very existence of the yet 

 unsubdued Guaranas depends on the mauritia, which gives 

 them both food and liberty. Formerly, when this tribe was 

 more numerous than at the present day, they raised their huts 

 on floorings stretched from trunk to trunk, and formed of the 

 leaf-stalks of their tutelary palm. Thus, like the monkeys and 

 parrots of their native wilds, they lived in the trees during the 

 inundations of the Delta in the rainy season. These platforms 



